Responding to Life

I always want to feel like I'm in charge. I want to know what's happening next, why it's happening, and put in my two cents about how to change it for the better.
There's a great man, though, who didn't feel that way. Rav ? Nanis was placed in Siberia for 6 years. He was beaten and tortured as his captors tried every means in their power to break him. They didn't succeed. In later years, when Rav Nanis was asked if he ever wondered why this had happened to him, he responded simply "It's none of my business."
"None of your business," I wondered, but it's your life! Are you not entitled to question, to know, to understand what's going on? If it's your life, you should have a say in it. How can you so calmly and simply state that it's "none of your business"? I had trouble grasping this. How could Rav Nanis have totally reliqueshed any desire for control and understanding about what happened in his life?
While wondering, my thoughts drift to a story of a man going to his friend's wedding. Dressed in all his finery, he came prepared for a beautiful feast. He entered the hall, looking around with anticipation for the beautiful table where he would be seated. After a few moments, a waiter walked over to him. "Come follow me," he stated crisply. "The table you will be serving is over on the left corner." "Serving?" the man responded. "Serving?!? Why I came here to be served!"
I've come into life thinking that I'm to be served. I'm here to be handing all my life events on a silver platter. My parents, love, friends, home, food, it all should be served to me; I'm a guest here.
Yet, maybe Rav Nanis was teaching me something different. Maybe I'm not royalty, being served at every turn. Maybe I don't need to know all that will occur to me. Because maybe that's not why I'm here. Maybe Rav Nanis was teaching me that I'm here to serve. My job here is to work. Why things happen is not my domain. It's irrelevant; I can leave that to the chef. I'm here to serve, to respond to what I'm given. My control is in the way I respond, in how I serve. I am in control, not of what happens to me, but in how I respond. The food that get served, the events that transpire in my life, they are "none of my business". But the way I respond, that's where my job lies.

With thanks to Rav Noach Orlowek and Dr. Lisa Aiken for the anecdotes