Are you controlling? Or being controlled? Or where, on this continuum, do you see yourself? Or is it a question of what ‘area’ because control is a relative term? From another perspective: control and ownership are closely related. If you don’t have any control then it’s difficult to feel any ownership for what’s happening in your sphere of involvement. Just as ownership has to embody a certain level of control for the ‘fruit’ of your endeavors to have any meaning, so control needs to have a context for ownership over what’s happening to provide any significance. No one likes to be involved in ‘make work’.
We all need to have some area of our life in which we are the total master, have complete control. Problems occur when there is conflict over ‘who’ is in control and/or when our area of control is usurped by someone else attempting to control. Obviously one issue is how to resolve the conflict between two
‘forces’ attempting to control. Another issue is how to resolve for ourselves our feelings when our control is threatened, attacked. Often the problem is that the two issues are inseparable which causes another area of conflict, especially when we don’t resolve our feelings.
While you may end up ‘losing’ control over the situation, you always have control over your feelings. The only time you lose control over feelings is when you willfully give up your rights, even ‘uncontrollable’ reactions/responses are never totally uncontrollable. Typically the actor in this situation really does know but chooses to disregard. Your control may not be in ‘how’ you feel but your expression of feelings is always yours to determine. And… not acknowledging your feelings is as bad as an explosive expression – maybe worse.
No one wants to lose control. No one wants to feel that others, events control us. In these situations we quickly attempt to discern where we can exercise control. Control in all of its manifestations is constantly changing. Our task is to determine where, in the midst of the ever changing, is our firm foundation; where is our area of responsibility, where is the place that we… control.
…but, what do you think? what do you believe?
