“I once heard someone say that a sign of enlightenment was the ability to say (and mean it) ‘Well, this isn’t what I want, but it’s what I got, so okay.’” ~Sylvia Boorstein
I once met a speed-cuber, one of those people who could solve a Rubik’s Cube in sixty seconds. Nice friendly young guy.
I hated him.
Not personally.
I hated him on the level of metaphor.
I hated him because I was jealous. Life always felt to me just like one big insoluble Rubik’s Cube. I could never get things under control on all sides at once. The harder I tried to make one side of my cube all one color, the more infuriatingly multicolored the other sides got.
It’s still like that. I still can’t get everything right at once. I can see clients or do chores around the house. I can spend time with my family or work on my book. I can go to dinner with friends or watch my weight. I can keep up with my professional reading or read mysteries to relax.
The one thing I can’t do is everything. I’m trading off all damn day long.
That seems to be how change works in the larger world too. The more we try to force life to meet our expectations, the more life pushes back.
It is a point made by cautionary tales as old as Midas and Scrooge and as modern as Jurassic Park.
And it is especially relevant to those of us who struggle with addiction to control.
I should explain that I consider myself a control addict.
I consider you one, too.
I don’t mean we’re all bossy or domineering. By control I mean our deep human desire to make reality cooperate—to make people, situations, and outcomes conform to our needs, wants, and expectations.
I’ve spent years thinking about how we do this, and why.
Along the way I’ve come to see three paradoxes hiding inside our attempts at control.
The first paradox is that the more control we need, the less in control we tend to feel. The second paradox is that the harder we try to control other people, the more we force them to control us back
But it’s the third paradox that made me hate the speed-cuber:
To get control in one place, you must give it up in another.
I am not alone in hating this idea.
I can think of many people whose determined attempt to get control over one area of their lives triggered a loss of control in another.
The drinker who used alcohol to manage his feelings, only to lose control of his need for alcohol.
The business executive who achieved success and status at work but became estranged from his wife and kids and extended family.
The mom who made her children the focus of her existence, then found herself so disconnected from her husband that they essentially stopped speaking.
The depressed man who spent years successfully hiding his feelings from everyone, then one morning found himself too exhausted to get out of bed.
And so on.
You’d think watching the third paradox in action over and over again would teach me to remember it.
You would be wrong.
I still want to write the book and spend time with my family. I want to earn money and take time to rest and play. I want bagels and pizza and the number on the bathroom scale to drop.
One thing has changed, though.
I’m getting better at not treating the scrambled side of the cube as meaning I’ve screwed up.
For most of my life, I took the scrambled side as evidence of failure. If the house was a mess, I should have cleaned it. If I wasn’t writing, I was wasting time. If I was writing, I was neglecting something else. If I ate the pizza, I shouldn’t have. If I skipped it, I was missing something I wanted.
There was always another side of the cube accusing me.
Now I see it as a reminder of something.
It reminds me that I’ve made a choice.
That inside every “yes” there’s a “no.” That a good writing day means chores don’t get done. That a good chore day means the book doesn’t get written.
Every choice costs me something.
Stated that plainly, the lesson seems Duh-obvious.
That it’s not obvious, for me or for most people, returns me to the idea of control.
Because there’s a part of each of us that simply wants what it wants. That wants and expects and demands and feels hurt and angry when that demand is not met. That doesn’t just want choices, but choices without cost. That wants to have the cake and to eat it at the same time.
Call this part stubborn, or childish, or addicted, as I do.
Whatever you call it, I’m guessing you carry some version of it too.
Don’t misunderstand me. I still envy that kid. I’d still love to know what it feels like to watch all six sides click perfectly into place.
But the addicted part of me is also coming—slowly —to accept that life isn’t a Rubik’s Cube.
Let me close with a story that shows what I mean.
During a routine physical my doc runs a cardiogram and finds a blip that suggests a TIA (transient ischemic attack). He tells me to drive to the ER. I feel fine, but I go.
At the hospital they put me on a gurney and park me in a hallway for four hours while they run tests. I have to cancel six client sessions, calm my worried wife over the phone, wonder what all this will cost, and then just lie there and wait.
At one time I would have reacted to all this with frustration, worry, or anger. Now I surprise myself by taking a one-hour nap. It’s a pretty good nap, too.
The surprise here was discovering that the addicted part of me has become willing to accept tradeoffs without protest.
To believe I’m not failing at life just because I can’t solve it.
And that the one thing I can’t do is everything.
About Steve Hauptman, LCSW
Steve Hauptman, LCSW, is a psychotherapist and the author of Monkeytraps: Why We Try to Control Everything and How We Can Stop (2015; revised edition forthcoming), a book about our addiction to control and the problems it creates in our lives and relationships. His writing explores control, emotional safety, relationships, and what becomes possible when we stop trying to make reality cooperate. Learn more at https://monkeytraps.wordpress.com and https://stevehauptman.com.
