Tag Archives: control

The Power of No

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For the last decade or so, I’ve been steadily subtracting.

As an experiment in reduction and elimination, I’ve taken the long list of life’s accepted “essentials” and pared them down to the most minimal survivable items.

Many would see these choices as psychotic rigidity without real purpose. But I have always lived on a narrow spectrum of black and white, so floating in the gray never held much appeal.

Some decisions are grounded in practices of optimizing health. Others are stubborn refusals to double back once I’ve started down a particular course. Either way, the list is constantly expanding, and there is a real risk that, given enough time, I may ultimately be left with nothing.

Still, I plod along, desperate for some modicum of control or a sense of peace in an increasingly uncontrollable, chaotically unsettling world.

Mental illness, in any of its various constructions, is a constant wire walk. The best we can do is build blocks of balance from whatever tools are readily available…and these are mine, for now.

Diet: No meat. No dairy. No nuts. No soy. No bananas. No avocados. No tomatoes. No peppers. No onions. No caffeine. No soda. No fast food.

Lifestyle: No sex. No drugs. No alcohol. No smoke. No prescription medication. No gambling. No hedonism.

Personality: No jealousy. No envy. No greed. No fear. No lust. No easy acquiescence. No easy sleep. No vanity. No addiction. No laziness. No breaks. No brakes. No self-indulgence. No self-forgiveness. No self-esteem. No sustained sense of hope. No hysteria. No indolence. No cowardice. No egotism. No profligacy. No pomposity. No inanity. No misinformation. No wastefulness. No tolerance for animal cruelty, of any kind.

This may all be madness…or just a dangerous form of mad science.

Time will tell.

Just say no.

Adolescence Interrupted

Take Both Hands off the Wheel

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Control has been my best friend and my worst enemy.

The notion, even when manufactured, that there is some way to walk in the puppeteer’s shoes and make the marionette dance is a great relief and an overwhelming burden.

A sense of control in an uncontrollable world has been the fresh carrot in front of this horse’s face for longer than I can remember.

When certain coding is imprinted onto a brain during development, the trajectory of a person is almost preordained. If the notion of safety and security is permanently removed, the eyes never stop scanning. The head is always on a swivel. Like stealing a chipset from a motherboard, this individual is left spinning in place, wary of what’s waiting in the shadows.

For those of us who have seen the dangerous and deadly aspects of this human experiment, there is little fun, excitement, or joy wrapped inside the concept of spontaneity. Reliable patterns, routines, and habits are the weighted wheels that keep the roller coaster cart from careening off the tracks.

So, when an unanticipated universal hand surprises me by ruffling my neatly combed metaphorical hair, a severely defective fight-or-flight response system gets quickly and easily overloaded.

Find flow and go with the grain. Learn to release, and accept the unexpected as variables are presented, even when bombshells detonate. Resist the need to dictate every part of the process.

Breathe.

This is a prescription more easily written than filled. But setting an intention is always the first step, and right now I’ve got some serious stairs to climb. Hopefully, the view is what I’d hoped. See you when I get to the top.

Adolescence Interrupted