Midline Monday: about control

From bending reality to mastering self

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Weekly Reflections

Let’s talk about control.

I’ve come to realize that I have a control problem. Maybe not the obvious kind. I’m not barking orders or trying to rearrange other people’s lives.

Mine happens on the inside; I spend a lot of time and energy trying to make the world cooperate. Trying to bend reality. Planning, scheduling, optimizing … ruminating.

And when something doesn’t go according to plan, I escalate internally. There’s a narrative violation. My story about how things were supposed to go gets interrupted, and my system doesn’t like it.

I get that feeling in my belly. My jaw tightens and my mind starts building arguments and counter-arguments for what should be.

It feels like high standards, or possibly ambition, but it’s mostly friction. Ruminating about what should be is my control problem.

Arthur Brooks has this to say on the subject;

We do not just experience what happens. We experience what we thought should have happened and the space between the two.

That gap is where the suffering happens.

It’s not the delay. It’s that it shouldn’t have been delayed. It’s not the cost. It’s that it shouldn’t be this expensive.

Epictetus said the same thing about two thousand years earlier;

Don’t demand that things happen as you wish, but wish that they happen as they do happen, and you will go on well.

The practice, then, isn’t suppression. It’s not pretending the frustration isn’t there; the tight chest, the fast thoughts, the urge to win. It’s noticing all of that, feeling it fully, and then asking a different question: not how do I make this comply, but who do I want to be right now?

Healthy control is having more agency over how we deal with what is. We’re not controlling the outcome. We’re controlling our response.

Letting go of the urge to bend the world to your will isn’t surrendering ambition. It’s relocating it. From controlling events to mastering yourself.

Onward 🖤