One of my favorite movie scenes is from the film “Parenthood”.  The father in the show, Steve Martin, has just been told his job is on the line – he needs to work more hours.  When he gets home he and his wife try to get the family out the door to a school play. She picks that time to tell him she is pregnant – again!  Feeling overwhelmed, they start fighting in the dinning room. In walks her mom.  Grandmother reminisces, saying, “When your father was alive we used to go to the amusement park and ride the roller coaster.  I love the roller coaster.”  Then she walks out. Steve Martin comments how disjointed and unhelpful that was and his wife jumps on him saying how much she loves roller coasters.  Later, at the play, their youngest son leaps on the stage to save his sister who is being attacked, as a part of the play.  The son flogs one of the actors and havoc ensues.  We see Steve Martin experiencing the floor rising and falling as if he is on a roller coaster.  We can tell by the look in his eyes that he is feeling overwhelmed.  Momentarily, he looks at his wife and they begin to laugh.  He has come to see the wisdom of Grandma’s comment. Some of us love roller coasters and some of us hate them.  But we are all on one.  Sometimes it makes us want to throw up and sometimes we scream in delight. But we are all subject to the ups and downs of life.  We often wish we were the ones at the control switch but usually it feels like the operator is a teen-age boy with a twisted sense of humor.

 Control - we crave it when we don’t have it and we struggle to let go of it when we know we should.  The desire for control of ourselves and control of what happens to us is our struggle from infancy forward.  Desire for control could be seen as the starting point for our development as people and as a society. History could be viewed through the lens of desire for control. Desire to control has created religions, wars, and science. It is about control of people as well as events.  And it starts very early.

As infants we struggle to get our needs met. We cry and someone comes to hold us, change us, or feed us. We learn that what we do creates certain effects. We have gained control of our environment in a very elemental way.  However, at this stage we could also learn that what we do doesn’t matter. Infants whose needs are not met soon learn they have no control over the world. So they stop trying to interact and develop what is called “learned helplessness.” Latter in life these are people are unable to make decisions because they have learned they have no effect on what happens to them.

Thankfully the learning process doesn’t stop with infancy -it continues all of our lives. As teens we struggle for control of our world as our parents try to maintain control of us. We learn how to manipulate people and information to control each other. Over time, in healthy situations, parents and children, learn to act as the separate beings we are. We learn when to let others be in control or not. Later, the patterns and styles of interaction and control we learned in our families are played out with spouses, co-workers, and friends.  We can unlearn some of the negative methods we have learned, but in times of stress we are usually going to fall back on those early patterns.

In addition to the desire for interpersonal control – the control of others – there is a desire to control the events in our lives. We save money.  We eat healthy and stay away from dangerous places and people.  We educate ourselves. We exercise. We drive carefully. We follow rules and plan ahead. We do all this and much more in an attempt to control our lives. Most of the time we are successful. Most of the time we manage to hang on to the illusion that we are invulnerable and that we live in a comprehensible world.

The hardest times are when we realize this is not true- times when our world is suddenly thrown into the realm of the incomprehensible!  All the money we have saved is needed for an emergency and now it’s gone.  Despite our healthy diet we get very sick. We suddenly find ourselves face to face with a dangerous person or lost in a part of town that is unsafe.  The unexpected can leave us feeling out of control and unsafe.

One classic example is a car accident.  In an instant all that was our day and perhaps our life can be dramatically changed.  A small t example of this occurred to me a couple of weeks ago.  I had the two kids in the car, I was on my way to work, but first I had to drop Ariana (my daughter) off at school. Traffic was awful because the roads were icy and snow covered.  I decided to take the back way to avoid the worst of it.  “I would be in control,” I thought.  I stopped at a stop sign and the next instant there was a crunch.  For a moment I couldn’t take in what had happened.  My reality did not include the possibility that we could be hit. After all I was in control. I was following the rules; I was stopped at a stop sign.  Suddenly, Ariana said, “what was that?” and I was moved to the new reality that we had been rear-ended.  Not serious. No one was hurt.  But it changed the course of that day and the next several.  Nothing big but still unplanned and unpleasant.  For days afterward I was much more carefully and aware, I realized how unsafe driving could be.  You would think living in Massachusetts I would have long ago incorporated such incidents into my reality, but I guess I am slow to change and learn- to give up my illusion of control.

Much more serious events cause even bigger shifts in our reality.  We suddenly realize we are vulnerable finite beings with no special significance to the universe.  We are subject to the whims of chance. We become lost in a world that is unknowable and confusing.  At these times it becomes hard to do the simplest of things because they no longer make sense.  Simply getting out of bed in the morning becomes a task that requires effort.  We are faced with feelings of being unworthy and weak.  One wonders how others have survived such times.

Consider these words from a mother, who has just been told that her child is developmentally disabled. She says, “Life –the buying and the selling, the rising and the working and the bustling-always does go on-in that indifferent way.  But she wasn’t quite going on.  Something was different.  She continues, “We had been jolted out of the mainstream and were entering into another time and place, one whose scope and boundaries were still unknown to us but which surely resonated with the dark tones of grief. There are moments, only a few, that we experience as irrevocable leaps from the known to the unknown, when the normal smooth flow of time crashes into a flash flood; we are catapulted into a future … we cry, afraid. ‘…  I am not ready. Not ready to lose my day’s sweetness, my night’s solace. …  We think we have some control even as the impassive, impossible truth sits staring malevolently at us. ‘Whether you sink or swim, you will deal with me,’ whispers the voice of catastrophe. ‘Whether you want me or whether you don’t I am here forever. You are impotent to change me, I will change you’”  (end quote)

During these times we are thrown back on our resources.  We recall those times in our past when we have dealt with tragedy. We call on friends, family, and professionals to help.  We use what inner strength and all the coping mechanisms we can muster to get through.

One of my favorite cartoons is Rose is Rose.  I have one posted in my kitchen.  In a dream-like frame we see Rose holding on for dear life standing on top of a train and it is careening out of control.  She hollers for her husband Jumbo.  We see him through a cloud answer. “Yes, Honey, anything wrong?”  In the next frame she is setting next to him on the couch saying “Anyway honey that’s how my life seems sometimes.  Thanks for listening.”  One of the best coping mechanisms, when life is like a train out of control, is our community.  When things get tough it helps to talk.  Talk to people who have been where we are.  Talk to people who care about us and will listen. Talk to those whose business it is to be there and help. Talk to family, friends, and professionals.  For some of us it helps to put the out of control feelings out in to the world to sort through them.

Most people try to find positive and coherent ways to think about the loss control. Some people find they cope best by comparing themselves to others who are much worse off.  Perhaps you saw the movie “My Life as a Dog”? In that film a young boy has lost his parents and is now bounced from home to home. Each time he is faced with yet another ordeal he says, “Well at least I am not the dog that the Russians sent up with Sputnik never to come back again.”  At least he isn’t as bad off as a dog.  Discovering others whose lives are more out of control makes us feel as if ours is more manageable.  We are not at the end of our rope because we can see a knot that is further down and we’re not there.

Judith Viorst, in her book for grownups called, Imperfect Control, talks about the inclination to find comfort in taking some blame for the accidents or chaos.  I might call this the “if only I had…..” coping mechanism. Viorst says that in contrast to wanting to blame others many people overrate their own responsibility. Paradoxically, it is interesting that people who blame themselves in a concrete ways often feel better.  “In other words self blame is a plus when we’re able to say a specific “I made a mistake”   This gives us the impression that we are still somewhat in control.  It seems that for many people, feeling incompetent, and guilty is more tolerable, considerably less frightening than feeling helpless and out of control.

Our memories of times we have felt out of control and the fear of it happening again motivate us to strive for control.  There are actual advantages to learning as much as we can and taking control when we can. A study that compared Illinois residents with those of Alabama found that those from Illinois were far more inclined to believe that they -rather than luck or God- controlled their destiny. Thus, when tornadoes threatened these states, the people in Illinois were far more likely to take precautions.  Not surprisingly, tornado deaths were higher in fatalistic Alabama than they were in “masters-of-our-fate” Illinois.  If we can predict, if we can understand, if we can prepare, we feel more capable and perhaps are more capable of avoiding disasters.

This sense of getting control of an out of control situation helps many. Positive thinking and blaming oneself be taken to the extreme. But if one feels out of control and one can get a feeling of being in control it seems to make matters easier. One example is a study where forty college students were given a series of six-seconds-long electric shocks and asked to press a reaction switch immediately upon feeling each shock. After the first series, half of the students were told that if they reacted quickly enough they could decrease the duration of each shock to three seconds.  In reality however they had no control – the shock time was cut down to three second whether their reactions were fast or slow. Nevertheless, their mistaken belief that they could control the duration of each shock make the shocks less stressful to them then they were to the other half of the college students who were given the shocks of exactly the same duration but who hadn’t been tricked into thinking that they could control them. This study makes the important point that believing we have control – whether or not we actually have it – helps make us feel better.

Some people are able to find meaning in chaos and confusion.  Beth’s reading reminds us that sometimes these bigger than life experiences can serve to make us feel better, less alone, and more connected.  In fact, research says that this is often the case.  People talk of their awareness deepening, their valuing of life increasing, and their enjoyment of each moment becoming more full after being out of control.

In situations that seem beyond us, we often find comfort in a sense of surrender. Not the throwing up of our hands in desperation but the mature realization that some parts of life are beyond our control.  There can be a sweetness in laying back our heads as the waters swirl around us.  Some of the strongest people I know are those who have a strong belief in God or a natural ordering that though beyond our understanding supports life.  For some this is a force that will create increased good in the end. For others it is a knowing that goes beyond words that is neither good nor evil but there to support us.  We are helped by this sense of being part of something that holds all existence; something larger. Thus paradoxically, we can sometimes gain a sense of being in control by giving up control.

Reynolds Price suggests, “To be sure, either God or the laws of nature will eventually force you to fall and die. But that event can tend to itself, with slim help from you. Meanwhile…. your known orders are simply to live.”   For many of us this means to live in the moment. Living each day and each event one at a time seems to help in times of stress and turmoil.  The recent experience of having a new baby has reminded me of this one.  I treasure the moments of quiet because they are few and far between, but I do treasure them.  I stop to cuddle and listen and rock him. Sometimes it feels like forced day to day existence. Sometimes there isn’t room to deal with more than the moment as it happens, but in this we can find the harmony that comes from attending to the littlest details.

We are all faced with that which is beyond our control. No matter what our coping mechanisms we come upon times that we can’t fix, can’t stop, and can’t change. We will reach a point when we feel vulnerable, worthless, and the world will make no sense. We need to recognize and use our resources.  Perhaps we need to find others who are worse off then us and do what we can to help.  Perhaps we need to take some of the blame ourselves.  We need to do what we can to prepare and learn. Our actions do shape our existence we are not hurly-gurly speeding through life but its not all up to us either. The best can hope for is to have some imperfect control. The ups and downs of the roller coaster surely have us all in its grip. If we are lucky we have choices about when and how to let go.  If we are lucky we remember to live in the moments one at a time. If we are lucky we will feel held as we lay our heads back in the swirling waters. If we are lucky we will understand the limits of our control and balance our lives with power and surrender.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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