The Reality of Power and the Illusion of Control

If you've ever had a protracted crisis accompanied by misery, and nothing you do seems to change that state, you likely have gained the insight that control is an illusion. This is a good thing. This means that the crisis and the misery don't have ultimate control, either.

In spite of this illusion, humans exert control like a muscle. Entire regimes have held a very tight grip, and yet it is always precarious and temporary. That is not to minimize the agonies that those regimes have pressed upon the people, animals, and lands they live upon. But at the end, their rule was an empty fist, which is what we all come into the world with, as infants. The regime's time on earth brought no progress, no enlightenment, no enrichment, and remained infantile. The people were weakened and scattered.

But is the same true for power? We all have felt it, regardless of its source, enough to know that power is real and lasting. There are legacies of power, but no good legacies of control. Power expands beyond control and releases, like a breath. Control merely contracts and constricts, suffocating. During a protracted crisis, when I feel out of control in a situation, I find it helpful to remind myself that power comes from a source that doesn't originate with me, and so it is always both available and accessible.

Reiki symbol for power cho ku rei

Where I usually mess up is when I want power so that I can do something specific. That's just me circling back around to wanting control. I decide, me, me, I, how it will go, my idea, my way, me. When real power comes into our lives, it doesn't always do our bidding. It is a force and a current, and we can either ride it forward or wave it on by. There is a choice when it comes to recognizing powerful forces and reckoning our own capacity or ability to hang onto them. We can be overwhelmed, burnt, shocked, flattened, suffocated, and wrung out by power. Control pushes and shoves, fiddles with and tweaks, sidesteps and dances around. Power rushes in and explodes little concepts of control. It demands respect and the wise are heedful of it. It would be foolish of me to think that I could surf on the powerful waves of Hawaii when I should take more care not to slip in the shower.

But sometimes calamity happens no matter how many safe practices we employ, nor how much due diligence we've exercised. Knowing this inevitability does help us to put a toe in the water and then someday push off. A respect for power, and a willingness to give up trusting in control alone, saves us from paralysis and stagnation. But it shakes us, too, and often very hard.

I have a vivid memory of my mother after she had broken her leg skiing for the first time. She was with some friends who were careless with her, and they allowed her to hop off the ski lift down a Colorado mountain. All that mountain air was giving them an illusion of control over their adventure, I suppose, but the Rockies were far more powerful than my mom's balance on her rented skis. The boot binding didn't release as she fell, and the twist cracked her shin bone.

My dad's reaction to her loss of control was equally vivid, when he got the call. I was in elementary school and he was at home with my sister and I that evening, smoking his pipe while the TV played. I was draped over the opposite recliner, reading a Nancy Drew book. All was domestic tranquility, until the phone startled us with its ring. It seemed that hardly a minute passed when he hung up the phone onto the wall, at a time when you could do that with feeling, and said simply, "Your mother broke her leg". He was matter-of-fact with a frustrated "I knew it" rolling off of him. He sat back down and opened his paper. I blurted out a laugh, once and quickly at the whole thing, as if I'd just heard a punchline of a bad joke they were playing together.

This was the beginning of the end of their marriage. So much time has passed since then that I can see how there were powerful forces at work between them that were pulling them apart. I felt my mother's misery as I finally was able to see her in the hospital, after her long flight home and surgery. I could feel my dad's helplessness and resentment at this sudden crisis. Her leg mended after several months, but their marriage did not. I found myself in the same living room tableau when my father announced their impending separation, too. Earlier that day, he, my older sister and I had just come back from our annual family summer vacation to a lake, but this time without her along. This was the inverse of her winter trip to the Rockies, she without us. My dad sat down and said simply, "Your mother and I are separating. You'll be moving to another house and a new school." I felt like someone had made an announcement and then hung up the phone on my head, and that I had fallen down, dazed. I didn't laugh this time, but ran toward my room. My sister had been told a few hours before me and was at a friend's house. My mom had told her, and I suppose in a 1970s spirit of equality between the sexes, he was to tell me.

My mom caught me in the hallway by the arm and took me onto her bed where she talked and I cried. The spread was shamrock green with white clover and I traced them with my finger. This is all I remember from that talk. Not a single word, just the bedspread of a lawn underneath my calamity and misery. When I emerged later, back to the living room, my dad was still in his chair, with newspaper and pipe, TV on. The program "One Day at a Time" was playing, about a divorced mom and her two teenaged daughters, and the fitting humor of this was not lost upon me. That show was why I even knew what a divorce was. But the three of us didn't move to a city apartment, I didn't look like Valerie Bertinelli in her cute ski sweaters, and I don't remember any of us cracking jokes. I didn't have any control over any of it; to fashion it into a bright stage setting with scripted resolutions. The basement in the newly rented farmhouse in the country flooded regularly and so did I.

Much later, after I had been married for a few years, I came to see my parents as lovably human and idealistic and that they were in over their heads. As for me, during those years, I wasn't helpless even while I was hurting, and I certainly wasn't powerless. I really don't think I was more miserable or more happy than any other teenager. I swung between brooding and trying to look like I was having the time of my life probably as often as anyone. There is always something to brood about and there are always scenes of merriment to wind up. I came of age during the time when "party" became a verb. We had to reassure ourselves that growing up didn't mean coming apart. We wanted to understand the forces that were at work upon our families, but not in a confessional, public way, as is commonplace now.

The power of my family has not been that we all lived together exclusively and in the same place forever and ever, world without end, amen. The power has been the mutual love and concern that has lasted. It doesn't usually look warm or sparkling, but it can be funny. A lot of times it just seems like people flailing down a mountainside on a course they have to take. Brave. Other times it looks matter-of-fact and comfortable, like a recliner and a newspaper. Tenacious. There can be a lot of blinding snow or circling smoke that gets in my eyes, and I can't see any of my past or future clearly. There is also a lot of releasing myself from trying to understand and control it all, so that I won't twist and crack.

Power breaks us and holds us together and knocks us down and carries us forward. Control appears to do all of that. Control is only a form, like technique. We admire control when it steps in, carrying something to marvel at with wonder, whether or not we understand what kind of power is before us. When we see or feel in art a lasting power, coming under the artist's temporary control, then we are raised up with both joy and suffering inside of that tension, into the exquisite.