When we are overwhelmed, we often seek to find control. For 7 years I had an eating disorder and what I learned through my recovery is how I used food to bring control into different aspects of my life. The fuel for this control was and is fear.
"The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear." --Nelson Mandela
The desire to control things can be so strong that it overwhelms us and we become rigid and sometimes easily agitated. I am an organised person and like things to be a certain way. When things are not the way I am used to it can be very uncomfortable and even scary. Big changes like a job shift, relationship or financial instability can make us feel uneasy because we don't know what will happen. It is out of our comfort zone and what we know. The need to seek control can cloud your mind and make it hard to see things clearly and as they actually are. In some cases, this limits our capacity for freedom.
Last year I made a choice to do things that scared me, yes they were small, like getting a tattoo, doing burpees, and singing in front of other people, but by doing these things my sense of fear about them and need for control over my discomfort lessened a lot. In fact, in some cases, I felt freer because I didn't let my fear control all of my actions and decisions.
When I talk about fear to my yoga and music students, I highlight that we fear what we do not know. We are placing our ideas onto something before we even know it. When I got my tattoo I was scared it would be painful, I had never had one and yet somehow I have a preconceived assumption that it would hurt, it did, but not as much as I thought.
As humans, I think we live with the luxury of having plans and knowing what will happen throug our planning. When that doesn't happen and we end up in an unknown space that feels scary. Yet, it is the unknown that is our greatest teacher. There is so much to learn from the unknown, so much we can attain by not knowing. As the meditators of the world might say, "the beginner's mind."
This power of fear can be an attempt at creating control over things we do not know, to keep us in our comfort zone. Of course, we want things to be easy and feel good. The reality of life is that sometimes it's not, the art to master here is to sit with the waves of comfort and discomfort. In short, it is to let go of control, especially where you have none. The amount of energy we exert to try and maintain control and comfort takes so much effort it's exhausting.
It can be hard to hear that control is an illusion, that we can somehow influence what comes in and out of our lives. It would be reassuring to believe you can control the circumstances that appear in your life ( control the people in your life), yet if we could, life would be boring. Learning to release control and surrender to the comings and goings is what brings quiet and peace. I know this because I felt, the grip that lets go and the mind that becomes quiet and present
A poem by Wendell Berry
"When despair grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free."
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