Losing control…
Imagine a man, driving along in his car - a sports car, let us assume for narrative elegance. He does not know where he is coming from or towards where he is heading. The only certainty at an instant t is that he has speed, power and life between the palms of his hands - he is alive. This feeling can be interpreted in many ways by different people. Some will say it is happiness, others will say it is pointlessness and a handful will say it is life in its most primal form.
All these people will base their observations on a focal data point: control. The extent to which one has control of oneself and of situations one is in defines the way one - and others - feel about one(self). This feeling is daunting and can make or break someone’s mental state in a whiff.
Quantification of control, then, is the measure of the control that one has at that point t. Being aware of how good or how bad one is doing at being in control of their own lives is a challenging information to handle. How much control is enough control? What does real control look like? Why does control keep slipping away from me? Am I too controlling? Should I let go?
Over the past 10 months, I have found that control comes - and goes - in many forms. Sometimes, I find that I have full control over myself, over how I react to situations and how I choose to exert my emotions. At other times, control seems like an attainable, yet brutally far planet that keeps slipping further and further as I go. This repetitive observation has led me to think: Do we really need to be in control to be successful, to do well, or to simply be alive?
Coming out of mainstream academia and entering a year of pause has shown me how much our environment affects the way we perceive ourselves and fuel our illusion of control. Since the schooling system is geared towards generic, systematically-engineered steps that happen every year from kindergarten, students quench their need for control by embracing the system. Predictability becomes the new form of control… and of comfort.
However, the more I venture myself into the abyssal grounds of after-school freedom, the more in control I feel. Of course, figuring life out and crafting a successful living remain Herculean tasks ahead, but control seems to be manifesting itself in much simpler ways. I am more aware of my emotions, of who I am in different settings, of how my thinking changes depending on my audience and on how ‘smart’ I am at managing people and people problems around me.
Essentially, I feel a gust of control coming to me in all the areas that school has been suppressing in me. I keep discovering a lot about myself, and about my appreciation for life. To me, these realizations are testaments of control - of awareness, of presence and of peace with the present, the past and the future.
Nick Trenton’s Social Skills for the Overthinker goes over a clinical route to move away from self-sabotaging and to regain control from within. He talks about catastrophic thinking and how people indulge into blaming themselves for feeling anxious, for instance, instead of taking action to move away from anxiety or try to smother its effects at best. Along this similar line, one too often blames oneself for one’s insufficient control; a subjective interpretation that suffices to crush one’s dexterity in most cases.
Control makes for a big part of our daily functioning. It has undeniably heavy effects on our placebo and therefore trickles its way down into almost every facet of our lives. I try to achieve control, and to learn how to preserve it. How about you?
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Until next time,
M.
