The Wisdom of a Fool

So, after some contemplation, it seems to me that the truth of the matter is this:

My entire life is governed by a need for/struggle towards/failure to attain control. The irony of my failure in this area is that the only thing that I desire to control is the only thing I do actually have power over in this life - myself. I choose to be a megalomaniacal, totalitarian regime of country of one. I strive to be dictator of the fiefdom that is me. However, so far, I have been more like the impotent PTA-president (continually outvoted and outmanned by my vociferous constituents) of my own domain, more than anything else.

Because I do not feel that I have control of my life - my emotions, my actions, my trajectory moving forward - I am afraid. My life is punctuated by the twin quotation marks of fear (open quote) and guilt (close quote), which book-end a seemingly john-jacob-jingleheimershmidt-ian perpetual internal discourse of free-form self-loathing, angst, narcissism and over-analysis. It is a profoundly frustrating and ultimately boring conversation to be sure. Much like the Yule-Log on TV around the holidays: Boring and adding no value - via entertainment, enrichment or otherwise - yet somehow oddly comforting after all of these years, if only for its complete and utter lack of variance. And so one tunes in, year after year, The Christmas Story marathon or It's A Wonderful Life be damned. Both presently and ultimately, the Yule-Log resolves nothing - it does not adhere to the story-arc principles of the half-hour sit-com, the hour-long quirky dramedy, or the formulaic voted-off-the-island reality show. It just burns. Continuously. Unendingly. It just is.

And so go my internal dialogues - interrogations, soliloquys, cross-examinations, voir dires, rapid-fire exchanges, opening and closing arguments by turn. Seeking an answer (resolution? conclusion?): Control. Never finding (achieving? mastering?) it.

I always thought fear was a symptom of my lack of control, but looking at it now, in diagram form as described above:

FEAR self-loathing (occasional funny snarky remarks) angst (fiendish devotion to celebrity gossip) narcissism (contemplation of random trivia - baseball or otherwise) over-analysis (unfettered shopping) GUILT, exclaimed CONTROL (LACK THERE-OF)

I see that, in fact, it is my fear is the prefatory factor here, it is what sparks all of the sypmptoms. Fear is what drives my perpetual lack of control. Guilt is just day-old fear, fear past its expiration date when the bacteria of worry has also set in to slightly change its character (and its smell?). So in fact the diagram of the sentence should actually look like this:

FEAR shrieked, self-loathing (occasional funny snarky remarks) angst (fiendish devotion to celebrity gossip) narcissism (contemplation of random trivia - baseball or otherwise) over-analysis (unfettered shopping) worry guilt CONTROL (LACK THERE-OF).

It is not a perfect analogy. I am still working out the kinks. But it is closer. Closer to the truth. The truth is out there. I have long known that anything I have ever done in life that has been worthwhile has scared the absolute bejeezus out of me: going to college three thousand miles from home, starting a job in a place and a company I had very little familiarity with, asking the powers that be at said job to let me make moves (professionally and geographically), breaking up with my BF of 4 years. All of these things, not easy, not even necessarily joy-inducing in their immediate result, but ultimately, the right and the only thing for me. And after making every one of these decisions, there was a strange and wonderful moment, a reprieve from the infinite spiral of chaos and anxiety. It was control. I did it. It was mine. It was a gift I gave myself through the courage of my actions. It was, however, ephemeral. This may not be the case for everyone, but I think my wiring is such that control (stability? the feeling of well-being?) is just not my default setting. I have to work to make sure the switch is keyed in to the control mode. And it's tricky. Especially when your default is fear, as it is trying to move from 1st to 5th gear all the time.

What is also ephemeral for me is that in those brief moments of control, I learn exactly how false the fear really is. I can do anything. It might not always turn out the way I would like, but I can do it. I will not burst into flames if I tell someone about my adverse feelings towards them. There may be adverse consequences (i.e. they may be angry with me, they may choose not to be my friend anymore etc.) but is that worse than the pain (the paralysis? the inertia?) of fear? Maybe so. Maybe not. It is all a situation that must be weighed. But the thick and heavy veils of fear are not easy to pull away from the mind's eye, and they screen out the rational and the pragmatic. There is no balance with fear, there is only hysteria. With fear, the scales are always tipped. No wonder the house always wins. And I'm always broke.

But lest this be another rant, spouting forth paragraph upon paragraph and meaning nothing, here is the conclusion (the truth of the matter alluded to (promised?) above):

Less Fear = More Control = Much happier Me.

And seeing as how objective consideration of how the fear attached to a situation is generally illusory (Using the phone to call the pizza guy is not scary! Showing up to that college fundraiser is not scary! Work happy hour is not scary! Making a doctor's appointment is not scary! Telling X person that what they said hurt your feelings is not scary!) is not really helpful, the only remedy appears to be to plow ahead, in spite of the fear and its nasty little comments in your ear (Talk to your roommates about the issue - look! You didn't explode into flames! Make the call to the personal trainer - go to appointments - see! You didn't shatter into a million pieces! Tell your brother you think he has been an ass and that his behavior over the last few months has been awful - okay, so he cried - but still, it ended up okay! You are talking to each other more now and you did not in fact melt into a puddle of goo!).

Eventually, I have to believe the fear must dissipate. If not ever wholly, then to a point where it is at least more manageable (tolerable? at bay?).

"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear" - Mark Twain

Of course, given that all of this has been offered for the truth, it could just all be hearsay....