Control. It’s human nature to want to control things. It makes us feel safe. It makes us feel powerful. It makes us feel better. Certainly better than feeling in danger, weak, or confused.
We seem to want more and more control as time goes on. Our institutions want more control over its citizenry. Every year there seems to be more and more attempts at censorship on social media. Always for the greater good right?
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
We have so little control over what happens to us and around us, to really think about it is scary. That’s why it’s so much easier for the masses to not think about it. Not only do we not think about it, we deny it. We deny it and try to force control on the external world and ourselves. Always for the greater good right?
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Trying to turn the world into an ever expanding safe space is as misguided as it is wasteful.
It is hard, if not impossible to accept how little of our lives we actually control without some kind of philosophy or spirituality practice, or in my case, both. Stoic philosophy and the spiritual teachings of Alan Watts have been tremendously helpful for me in letting go.
Focusing on what I can control, letting go of what I can’t.
Easier said than done of course, just like everything else in life.
My mind seems to drift into mental movies about possible future events and possible future outcomes that stir up my emotions with the velocity of a jet engine. I was never taught to think like that, or feel like that. Not directly, I suppose. So where does that way of thinking and feeling come from?
I’ve lived enough life, met enough people, to know that not only am I not alone in that way of thinking and feeling but that way of thinking and feeling is the norm.
I’ve also lived long enough to know that what is considered normal is insane.
Insanity wrapped in social acceptability.
Studying stoic philosophy, listening to Alan Watt’s speeches (preferably with some video playing to compliment his words) helps calm my mind with perspective, and ease my emotions with wisdom. Breaking vicious circles inherited through nature and nurture, and in a way, restoring child like ease and wonder towards life and the world…until the next challenge presents itself. And those don’t take too long to show up. If we’re alive, we’re facing challenges.
Anxiety comes about because we want to control the uncontrollable. We would prefer to not have challenges but that is not how life operates so we get anxious about it. And why wouldn’t we? Did we ask to be born? Did we ask for a series of never ending challenges sporadically spaced out from the time we are born until the time we die? Absolutely not. Who would?
At least we are fortunate enough to be alive at a time when the knowledge and wisdom of the greatest thinkers in the history of the world is so accessible with such little effort. So we have to tools to better address our so called problems.
It is natural to forget. It is natural to be anxious. Philosophy and spirituality practices help us to remember.
Anarchy Journal Constitutional 