may forgiveness
monthly theme: [control]
Control might be one of the sneakiest topics we traverse this year--it’s literally everywhere. I started having conversations with my friends about control, codependence, narcissism, and manipulation at least 5 years ago and we’re still sharing how “we can’t believe the control we’re hanging onto,” or “how we let someone else control us.”
This month has been so hard for me to write about because of the complexity of control...it’s so personal, often starting with attachment theories. Control is steeped into every corner of our lives--whether it’s our own approach or someone else’s. This is why the work has been and will be knowing when to push, pull, relax into it, or release it completely and walk away. And the forgiveness begins when we realize that we took control or were controlled in a way that doesn’t feel right in retrospect.
It’s never actually the “wrong” decision or experience, I don’t believe that exists. Especially with control. Sure, you might feel like something’s wrong, but that’s just learning what you’d rather try next time.
Reflecting on how you exerted control over your corner of the world in 2020, were you heavy-handed or did you let things slide? I remember banging my head against a way trying to get people to see things the way I did. Feeling out of control, I sought to exert some power over something, anything, but of course it never worked. And I don’t feel bad about trying! The experience of trying to control something out of my hands has given me more clarity moving forward. I am thankful to release control again this time around the sun as similar feelings creep up (possibly as a continuation of the anniversary reaction of this complex and ever-unfolding trauma of Covid-19).
The opportunities to approach control with new eyes, hands, feet, mouth, and mind are constant until our very last breath. Maybe it’s the death doula in me, but that is the ultimate relationship with control--our own mortality. I apologize if that’s too much for us to chew right now. I know this content is heavy enough as it is, but thinking about control in terms of our life and how it will end has been so freeing for me. The dying process presents itself with our final opportunities to be in control, but these decisions are finite, often with many extenuating circumstances. Coming to terms with this fact (often multiple times at various stages in our mortality) puts everything into a new light.
And when we interact with the world from a perspective grounded in the inherent truths of what it means to be alive, the work of control seems to fall into place. So forgive yourself for getting wrapped up in another image of the world that no longer holds true to you and your community. Forgive yourself because I know you were doing your best all along.
If you can, maybe let out a laugh, knowing how silly it is for a human to attempt to control things vastly out of our reach. Look deep into the desire behind that control and redirect your energy to a place where it can be used right now in this lifetime. Because it’s not that we have no control over anything, but that the context (and possibly dimension) in which we do have control is usually not the place our society teaches us to direct our energy.
