Human beings seek control--control of their fate; control of their careers and finances, and many times control of their peers or family. We crave it. Instinctually, we seek as much control of everything that we can. Actually, more precisely, we seek the maximum amount of control that society deems acceptable without being considered controlling.
There’s a point at which we seek too little control and society deems us weak. We grab too much control and we are deemed manipulative in our personal lives, and micro-managers in our work life. There’s a sliding scale that somehow determines acceptable control, weakness and being controlling. It’s a game we all play and want to win, and a dance we all learn and try to master, but none of us really have any idea what the rules of the game are or if we should follow, lead, or God forbid, correct our dance partner.
Collectively, society determines what is to be the appropriate amount of control in our lives, and society’s viewpoint is fluid, ever changing with the times. As individuals, we have no clue. We never really know what the acceptable levels should be. We never know exactly when its necessary for us to make a stand, draw a line in the sand and declare we are tired of lacking control in our lives. Nor do we know exactly when we need to pull back and rely on fate, God, astrology or whatever, if anything, we believe may guide us. We never know until after we take a position when society tells us if it is acceptable or not. It’s comical at times, but it’s such an unfair game we have to play.
When we are dealt a series of bad cards in life and feel control start to slip, we maintain our poker face for the next hand. And, then one day we might wake up and decide we have had enough of being nice, your poker face has caused wrinkles and the only thing you can do to stop your death spiral is stand up for yourself and declare, “Not fucking today, Satan!” and you plot a course to control your circumstances and shed yourself of the dreaded poker face because you’re not going to take it anymore. But, were you talking to Satan when you ask that question or was it Satan driving the question all along?
Recently, I reached a breaking point in having a lack of control of my life, and as I do, of course, with many things I took it to the extreme. Rectifying the final bad hand that I was dealt became my singular, laser-focused objective and if I didn’t succeed then I would be doomed to perfecting my fucking poker face for eternity.
2018 was having the nerve to treat me worse than 2017, and I was going to prove to myself that I was a man by changing my fate. As it turned out, whoever you believe in, because I don’t believe in much along these lines, was laughing at me. I was desperate to grab back the control of my life, but along the way, fate was still fucking with me at every turn until it nearly broke me.
This ridiculous game we play with control sent me on an obstacle course through hell this past Wednesday morning until yesterday. At times, I put myself, I am quite sure, on a path that I could have easily not survived. The catalyst for this seemingly, maniacal quest to gain control of my life was when I realized Wednesday morning that someone to whom I was loyal and had helped without question in the past, had stolen my cell phone and lied to my face about it We searched at home for it forever it seemed and then he volunteered to go retrace the path we walked to breakfast earlier in the morning to make sure it wasn’t dropped on the ground as we walked. I continued to look all over the house for the phone while he went to check the road.
He never returned.
