Contemplating a compulsion to control

When you are strapped into your airplane seat 30,000 feet in the sky do you feel a sense of weightlessness and calm, or are you consumed with dread and a sense of being trapped? For many years I felt the latter. I would sit through flights just anticipating their end as the wheels touched down; wishing I did not have to be suspended in the atmosphere, but not being willing to forgo my love of travel. My heart would race every time there was a bump, frantically looking out the window assuming the worst. In recent years I have actively tried to combat the fear considering it irrational but wearisome especially given how much I fly. I would counsel myself with statistical evidence that more people die in car crashes, that the flight crew and the ground engineers were very capable – none of it seemed to dissipate the fear but in working on it I developed a means of control. There it is that word, control. As I sat on my recent flight from Salt Lake City to Atlanta, we hit extreme turbulence to the point that the captain asked all flight crew to take their seats. I of course was initially hit with a wave of anxiousness about the situation, but I drew a breath, closed my eyes and reminded myself that there was absolutely nothing I could do. In doing so I relinquished the compulsion to try to control a situation that would have been futile anyhow. I returned to my movie watching, observing my breath and basking in the knowledge that whatever the outcome I was simply a passenger in the moment. Embracing the loss of control of a situation brings such beauty to embarking on a plane, I sit back knowing that for 3, 5 or 10 hours I have nowhere to be and nothing that needs my urgent attention. 

My thought process as I basked in the deep breathing (of course it is still stale airplane air) was how much of the recent past has brought me to this moment, to a place in my life where I truly feel free. Having spent far too much of my life trying to control my situations and those around me, I was faced with the truth that ultimately the only control I have is over my own body, my own emotions and my own reactions/behaviour. 

I find myself travelling back in time to a moment I cannot decipher but it is there, a moment where I became consumed with fear. A dark shadow lurked as feelings of mistrust, displacement and inadequacy began to coexist alongside the joy, the love and adventure of my inner child. Somewhere along the way, the humanity of life became equated with control and perfection. I needed to achieve perfection, and that shadow had manifested itself into a deep and vocal inner critic determined to undermine the little girl inside of me. Not being good enough in myself or my body ensured that I sought validation from others. In the love I received I basked and savored every moment of it as it made me feel some release from the anxiety of that inner critic. Emotionally I desperately needed confirmation that I was enough just as I was. I have been blessed to have so many wonderful incredible people in my life, both family and friends, and yet I could not bring myself to fully trust that they could silence the inner critic. I focused on trying to manage the unpredictability of the relationships with people I loved in my life based on a fear that they might one day not be there.

Breaking the compulsion to control is an arduous task of silencing the critic and embracing the little girl who wants to be free to frolic. There is not a moment where life slapped me in the face, rather it has been a gradual weighing down of my tree branch with the baggage of painful attempts to control, to a point where it just snapped. As with any fall it has been deeply painful; at times my body is consumed with the weight of sadness as I dig deep pulling back the layers exposing the dark shadow, shedding light on it, not allowing it to hide any longer. 

What I am left with is my humanity and hence the ability to see all the raw humanity of those around me. I find myself being respectful of others and in doing so truly loving them for who they are to me and not what I want or need them to be. It is truly a beautiful sight to see those you love stripped of all the demands and expectations you place on them. You see them just as they are and trust that they too know what is best for themselves as you do for you.

What’s done is done I tell myself often these days. The present is what sustains me, because in the present I have the ability to be and do anything I want. There is no sense of wishing I had been different at times past, that things had happened differently in my life, that I had uncovered the humanity of my parents at an earlier moment back in time. What is the use? What’s done is done, and I embrace my present. I am sure you all want to return to a moment in time where you can replay the mental movie changing the narrative and the ending, but the past is already written and there is only right now. Truth is that is the most beautiful thing, that there is only right now because that is a true acceptance that there is no control over life but only over our reactions to what occurs to us. And that I do have control over – how I react to life’s twists and turns is completely within my control and mine alone.

My blogs of late have been a journey and I thank you for humoring me as I guide you on my path of embracing self-love. Is it navel gazing? I say not - in order to truly embrace the unpredictability of life and people one loves, one has to start from within themselves. A rose garden does not flourish from a fragile or rotting bud. I share with you all because so much in my life has gone unsaid and the stifling of voices bred the shadow. You as one of my blog readers are one of the people who have touched me most in my life, brought me joy, brought wisdom into my life, brought interesting narratives, and so I celebrate you all as I celebrate all our imperfect humanity.  

Some artistic alteration of the bike crossing button symbol - made me smile on one of my rides this week

                               

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