Control

This leads me to the hot button that almost everyone has had with at least one thing in their life: Control.

We briefly addressed control last week. There is a positive and negative aspect to control. Here we will discuss control in a negative perspective.

Having control is just an illusion. You can’t obtain control over anything in this world; the weather, your experiences, someone else, you can’t even assume your day is going to go exactly as planned. To assume you have control over external instances and circumstances is foolish to believe. The only thing we have perceived control over is our body and that’s not even fully accurate. You can’t control the function of your organs, they have an innate ability to do what is required to sustain life, especially the digestive system. We can encourage proper functioning through the healthy foods and drinks we ingest, but it’s not the same as having control. We can have perceived control over the digestive system for a little while with medication but eventually the body will return to it’s natural order when the medication is gone from our system.

Control can be likened to a form of force. It’s defined as having power over something. Trying to force something to happen based on your own terms and expectation of outcome. Force never works with relationships, conversations, day to day activities, and forcing our body to do something unnatural. We’ve all experienced someone, whether it was a friend, family member or co-worker, who was trying to make us do something we weren’t necessarily fond of. How did you feel when this happened? Probably a bit put-off and wanted to go the opposite direction. It never works. Realistically, if you wanted to get to know someone you wouldn’t force them to become your friend, you would gradually get to know them and have a mutually beneficial relationship. It’s literally scientific: Newton’s Third Law of Motion is: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

“This too shall pass” encourages space through the removal of judgement, resistance and attachment from all circumstance.

LET IT GO. Surrender to the flow of life. Be unattached or untethered to outcomes.