The Illusion of Control
The past six months have been a whirlwind of change. My parents followed my brother and his family down to Raleigh last Fall, uprooting the last “anchor” I had in Baltimore. (Some of my best friends are still there.) My job changed pretty dramatically, pivoting me from ad tech architecture into larger data strategy.
But perhaps the most impactful change of all…Gizmo, my 3 pound chihuahua, and best friend of 17 years, passed away at the end of January. It’s a hole I’m still struggling to fill, though I’m coming to terms that it’s a hole that I never will.
It’s all been unsettling, but I’ve held on to something I read years ago – that everything is always changing, and pain does not come from losing something. It comes from not letting go.
We don’t really have any control, though so many focus all their energy trying to attain it. Their flaw is that while they’re focusing so much on trying to control what they can’t, they’re not focusing on adapting. In the end, we can’t control change, we can only adapt to it – and whether we spend our finite focus on an illusion, or what we actually have impact over, is what determines how we fare.
In every change there is opportunity. We can either find it, or stubbornly try to cling on to what has already passed.
It all comes down to what we can actually affect, and that which we cannot. Control is a comfortable illusion, it makes us feel safe. That’s what makes it so dangerous.
