Word of Wisdom: Control

“Life is to be lived, not controlled…” Ralph Ellison

We want to be in control. We just do.

Why? Because control is power over the things and people around us. And power, we think, will fill the void in our hearts. It will, we hope, medicate the fear, the uncertainty, the anxiety that mortality has programmed into this age of the human experience. That our traumas have etched into our being.

To not have control is a more terrifying prospect for many of us than dying itself. To not have control worries our wounded hearts because, fundamentally, we view the things and people around us as threats that, if left uncontrolled, will hurt us even more.

The desire to control, we come to realize, is rooted in our fear. And fear is exhausting.

The exhaustion develops slowly over time. We don’t feel it at the outset; in fact, often we experience exhilaration when we get our first taste of exerting control over people and places. It seems to us that we’ve arrived—we’ve conquered the threats and overcome the primal angst.

But eventually we wear down and have to strive even harder to maintain that control. And so a cycle of diminishing exhilaration and deepening exhaustion develops. Why? Because being “in control” (put another way, being “a controlling person”) is wearisome work.

The word itself comes from the Latin contrarotulus, meaning “to roll against”. When we control people or things, what we are quite literally doing is rolling against them. We are contra them…against them. And when our goal is to control—to be “against”—everyone and everything around us, things get lonely and tiring real quick. Rolling against everything, all the time, is a strenuous endeavor.

On top of that, it produces an ever increasing resistance. To be controlled—to have someone contra you, against you—is not a pleasant experience. Anyone who has had a controlling parent, a controlling boss, a controlling spouse, even a controlling friend knows how this feels. Because no matter how much a controlling person truly believes they are “helping” us, what we experience is them rolling against us. Being contra us. And as we react to that, they have to roll against us even harder.

So how do we escape this exhausting cycle? Release control. In small ways at first, begin releasing the perceived need to control, the need to “roll against” everything around us. Then, actually stop rolling against people and circumstances. Just be.

And, maybe for the first time, we can begin rolling not outwardly, but inwardly toward our own impulses. Toward our inner defaults of aggression, avoidance…indulgence. Self-control. An actual fruit of the Spirit within us, rather than a fear-induced reaction to the world around us.

It’s in this new posture that we can begin to experience a restfulness that has been eluding our hearts. Instead of believing we have to be the rigid, immovable rock pushing back against the elements around us, we can be the water. We can begin to flow, to experience the tranquil, flexible freedom of just being in the Creator’s current.

Be water. Better yet, be living water. Many parched souls are waiting.

“Saule Saule quid me persequeris durum est tibi contra stimulum calcitrare” Acts 26:14b (Latin Vulgate).