Reflecting more on what I wrote yesterday amidst the laying of a new foundation for myself, I want to add/amend to what I think about with control.  Control for me wasn’t always about being right.  No, being right was about proving myself, not about making others wrong.  But control over others for me was a self-defense mechanism and I felt like I had to control others all the time so I wouldn’t get hurt.  Not the first time I’ve written about that.  I have no real desire for power—I don’t want the responsibility of dictating what other people do with their days.  I don’t want to be the one calling the shots all the time—90% of the time people do what they want to do anyway. No.  I don’t want that type of control.  I want peace.  I thought I could gain peace in telling others what to do so I could avoid headaches and mess from having to fix it when it all falls apart.  But the truth is, we gain peace through doing what we have to do, doing what we are called to do.  Playing our role, the role we were designed to have.  Power comes through peace of mind which we get when we have power OVER the mind—not over others.

It’s funny how we can convince ourselves we’re doing the right thing in telling people what to do and believe that we know better than anyone at anything.   I’m living proof that for those who want to make others happy, they will give up their entire identity in a heartbeat if it means getting acceptance.  It’s easy to lose yourself when you’re the one laying that identity on the table.  When that happens one too many times, we build a defense, a wall, we tell ourselves we won’t let people hurt us again.  It’s also funny when we set those boundaries people talk about how we changed and we’re not the same.  And they’re right—we’re not the same because we’ve learned to be less accessible.  That doesn’t mean I’m controlling the narrative of their lives, I’m controlling the narrative of mine.  When we have that type of peace, we know what we are willing to engage in and we learn what we can let go of.  Not everything is a fight.  As a society we are trained to be reactive, defensive, to fight for what we want, to earn, to prove—and we make each other feel that way.  We have nothing to prove to anyone but ourselves. 

The point is we have to learn what it is we really want.  The brain is an amazing machine but it will always and forever take the path of least resistance and work with what it knows.  It will work with how we are feeling in the moment and impulsively decide what to do, it will create walls or doors depending on what’s needed.  That makes it easy to mistake the desire for control with the desire for peace—like I said above, we think control will give us peace.  There is nothing in this entire universe we can control.  Yes, we can control our actions and decisions, we can hope to get the results we are looking for—but we never know 100% what that result will be.  We try to mitigate the factors that impact our choices and we can become proficient at getting a certain result but the only 100% certain thing is that the universe will do what it takes to keep divine order.  Sometimes we don’t know the reasons behind it, we just have to accept it—and we learn to become comfortable with where we do have power.  We don’t need to have power over anything to be content or feel safe.  We just need to have power and awareness of ourselves.