And there’s nothing wrong with that.

I believe control gives way to our earnest fears. We give so much power to this notion due to the anxiety of being exposed to the unknown. You end up learning so much of what you’re scared of based on the things you put so much effort into withholding. It's all a slippery slope leading back to the strict attachment we put into things. The cultivated world we create to the vision we have for ourselves can too easily be shambled when we let our pride of control make us inflexible to the differing tides of life.

We deny ourselves alternative routes, future lessons and eventual roundabout success because we made it a mission to fixate on our idealized form of achievement. The powers of dreams and aspirations are profound but they do come at a cost. We inherently add checklists and timelines to all the goals we wish to accomplish and punish ourselves when we don’t live up to the selfimposed deadlines that we create. Too much insistence on control disassociates our thoughts from the real value of our work and creates a false narrative of how our lives should go based on how we observe others. So people amount themselves to failures before even allowing for a realistic opportunity to succeed.

Whether in interactions with friends or the search for romance, seeking the reigns of controlling every variable just makes you susceptible to whatever you want to avoid. In too many cases, rejection is the result of trying to force togetherness. We place so much of a demand on our desires that we become ignorant to the real situational necessities required to nurture close bonds with others. In a sense we become deaf to what is really needed of us in critical moments, all because they don’t align with what we want.

Controlling what you want from others isn’t a showcase of wisdom or authority, it’s just an illusion fooling us to think we have more power than we truly do. And when that illusion deteriorates all we have left to face is the deep seeded fear that we struggled to steer away from originally, loneliness.

Putting forth a concentrated focus on what direction you want your life to go is not at fault in the same way there’s nothing wrong in having a set standard for the qualities or behavior of those you choose to interact with. But, just as in the fable of King Canute who tried to direct the tide, we can not force our will on the outcomes of our lives nor have the belief that our command is absolute. Otherwise we become too vulnerable to the unpredictable realities awaiting us. By learning to flow seamlessly with what’s in front of us, the wider picture becomes more visible. Adversities still occur but you become more open to handling them and most importantly learning from them.