This is me taking control.
Control is something I have not had a great deal of in my life. I have drifted aimlessly from one day to the next for the last 25 years. Even making that statement feels painfully honest. But it is true. I am intelligent, creative, qualified as a professional person. I have children, I drive, I can book international travel. I can do all those things that are supposed to be the hallmarks of a proper grown up adult human being. Control, though, is something I have found endlessly elusive.
Even now, I am unsure what I even mean by control. What is it? The Oxford Languages online dictionary says:
the power to influence or direct people's behaviour or the course of events.
"the whole operation is under the control of a production manager"
a person or thing used as a standard of comparison for checking the results of a survey or experiment.
"platelet activity was higher in patients with the disease than in the controls"
take into account (an extraneous factor that might affect the results of an experiment).
"no attempt was made to control for variations"
So let’s take those one at a time.
The power to influence or direct people's behaviour or the course of events.
This is about control over. Having authority, being of a higher status than. For me this is not a comfortable place. I have avoided authority or butted up against it. I have seen authority as being mechanical, non-human, non-caring. This is of course rooted in paternal influences. My father, despite being a loving parent, came from a very different world to the one I was born into. He was a child during the Second World War, he had staunch moral values and had children much later in life. By the time I was born, my Dad’s rather stoic values were well embedded. Also he did not come from a world where change was a good thing. In his experience change meant risk, suffering and loss. For him a conservative life was ‘correct.’
As a result of my father’s rather authoritarian approach, I have always struggled with authority, which is another way of saying, I always struggled with my relationship with my father. We disagreed on so many things, but it was not until after he died that I realised how much we had in common. Even after he passed away, he was still in control. I felt guilt and remorse and sorrow that we had not known each other better and I blamed myself. Still he was in control. It was not until I started my own therapy that I discovered how toxic this relationship had become. Not necessarily my relationship with my Dad, more the relationship I had with myself in relation to my Dad.
Let’s move on.
a person or thing used as a standard of comparison for checking the results of a survey or experiment.
A slightly different meaning, but just as relevant Because this is all about comparison. When I cast my mind back to when I was around 14 or 15, I remember feelings of massive anxiety, also feelings of inadequacy. I sometimes convinced myself that my whole life was a joke that I wasn’t in on, as if I was in some kind of Truman Show parody where I would one day be found out to be little more than the butt of a joke I had no hope of understanding. When I read this back, I really feel for that kid. He suffered greatly and these days I have such admiration for his resilience and ability to keep going through such mental torture.
These feelings were coming from a place of bullying. I was ridiculed for a homosexual relationship, stories of moments of incontinence from infant school filtered through the teenage grape vine. Kids I had thought were friends found new status by sharing stories of my shame. I was not good enough. Other kids were more confident, more successful, faster, funnier, just better at being themselves. they were the control groups in the double blind study of my life.
take into account (an extraneous factor that might affect the results of an experiment).
This is a slightly more abstract understanding of control, but still relevant. Throughout my life I have made this mistake: not taking into account all the salient facts. I have avoided looking at the things that might confound my aspirations. Why? Because looking at these things is an avoidance of childhood pain. We all carry it. We have all experience some kind of pain, trauma, neglect or injustice on our formative years. These moments create blind spots for us. We avoid, delude and resists where life throws up those moments when we really need to adopt a frame of mind that is uncomfortable or even painful for us. When this happens we are relinquishing our control to the hands of those who have shaped our lives.
I am a parent. I have grown up kids and my god I love them. But I have not got it right all the time and on occasions I have fucked up royally. I have influenced my kids in ways that I will not even be aware of. Is this a sin? No. This is human behavior. More than that, this is natural process. Within any natural system there are adversities, traps, opportunities and strengths. What is important for my children is not having a parent that got it right all the time, but having people in their life who love them and for whom they feel love.
When we are born we have two needs: one is to breath; to vent the fluid from our infant lungs and take our first breath of air. The second thing we need is love, to be held, to feel the comfort and warmth of another human body against our skin. Once we can breath and feel love, we experience control for the very first time our brand new lives.
But this is a different kind of control, this is not control over something or of something or even someone. This is a type of control related harmony, balance, being at peace, at ease and in a place of acceptance. This is the moment we are in, and when we find ourselves there all other mental and emotional noise melts away. Think about it: breath and love, breath and love. These are the two fundamentals of life. When you have these two values held gently in your life, you have control.
Control over other?
You don’t need it. It is an illusion, because cause and effect is a four dimensional environment, not a linear progression of yes and no logic gates. You can reduce things down to something mechanical if it helps, but you will always be missing something. In the same way, if all you do is focus on the emotional, then you will be missing something there as well. Life is an integrated deal, its complicated, so we are here and this is now: breath and know that love is a part of it.
I want these posts to mean something to people who are starting a journey that began for me more than 25 years ago. I also want to hear from you because this cannot be a middle aged man dispensing wisdom like its Diet Coke in a vending machine - that is bullshit. This is a dialogue across time, so please comment, ask questions and let me know if I am getting this right.
So remember to breath and big love always.
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