our conflict with “why” and how to let go of control
As an avid know-it-all, not knowing things really pisses me off. Especially when they have to do with my future.
I am not going to lie. This has a lot to do with my perfectionism, since I find it hard to not have every single thing in my life under control.
You might feel you need to weight all your options under intense scrutiny standards before you make an actual decision on that couch that you want to buy or the new bag that you want.
We overflow ourselves with information about everything because we want to be sure that we choose exactly the thing that will be best for us that will be worth all of our money or that it would make us the happiest.
All these pros and cons lists on which tomato is the best tomato in the store (I am exaggerating unless you do this) are only wasting our time.
And unfortunately, the worst part is that we are left with the “I should’ve gone for the other option” sensation, which I believe is the worst.
No one wants to think that they are always making the wrong choice.
Listen, if you want to do something like move to another country that’s different, you have to take due diligence because it’s a big move, but you have to acknowledge that the feeling of wanting to move away and explore yourself is there.
This feeling relating to control
When we have a feeling of wanting to know everything, it’s mostly related to wanting to have things under control.
To know everything is to have little strings on things that we know we can handle.
If you know where people are, if you know how every single step of your trip before you go, there is no room for mistakes or stress, right?
Or so we think so because we don’t own life and unprecedented things happen. We stress out wanting to figure everything out before, and then we get more stressed when things get out of our control.
Control and perfectionism
We live with the idea that life is always meant to be calm and peaceful and that we can eventually reach this goal. So we move carefully and we make sure we set our boundaries. We try shutting off stressors out of our lives. And this is okay until it becomes obsessive and controlling and we try to change the people around us to fit our narrative.
This perfectionism can get out of our control and when life happens, and we were not expecting it or we were not ready for it, it’s easier for us to freak out.
The control and the perfectionism easily interfere in our lives and it becomes harder to deal with the unprecedented moments and actually explore who we are and who others are because the second something is off we panic.
We don’t need to have everything under control, just as we don’t need to know everything.
Adding mystery to life
Some things are also better left unknown. There are some “whys” in life, often better left as questions.
Sometimes we will have questions about others and we will want to know the answers to things, but we know that hearing this will probably get us hurt.
Just like you don’t need to know why someone cheated on you, because it is enough that you know the fact that they did.
I’m not saying that this is a way to add mystery, but that it’s an acceptance that helps us to add peace to our lives.
The adding mystery in life with not knowing relates to the unknown. It relates to letting life due its thing, just directing it but setting it free.
I have more blogs on the unknown over here:
But this is about trying to know everything to control it and tying it with perfectionism and our fear of not being in control.
Accepting that we will never know everything as the truth
There are some heartbreaking facts that I have learned in my life that ick a part of my brain that I can’t explain. And that is that you will never know what someone else is thinking, and that you will never know how someone else is feeling.
People perceive the world in their own way. What we have been through, what we have learned and who we are affects how we think and it affects how we see.
What you see as truths of life might not be the same for everyone else around you.
Let me tell you that as someone that wants to know everything, not knowing what other people think and feel is a bit sad.
There are a lot of things that we will never know as truths and all we can do is put our trust in these facts.
As people that have a hard time trying to control everything, this is our first step.
To start trusting. Start trusting that everything will go the way it needs to go and that will be okay.
There is a certain surrender that comes with accepting that we will never know everything
Guess who was stressing this morning over them not knowing physics well enough to understand the laws of the universe and how the space-time continuum works? Me. You probably ask yourself: why would you even want OR NEED to know that?
My rebuttal is that I don’t and that I have to cope with the fact that I will never know just as you have to cope with the fact that you will never know if your friends really like you and that you just have to trust their word for it.
Letting go of control is about trusting
Our conflict with whys
Why do we always want to know why and why can’t we stick with the facts?
When we ask why, we instantly assume that there is an answer. But id doesn’t cross our minds that people might not even know the answer to the why you are asking. If you are asking “why did you say that to me,” “why did you hurt me?” We need to know that people sometimes do things without knowing a reason. If you want an answer, ask their therapist, not them, because a lot of times there is not self-awareness at the moment to know why. We are human, we act on impulse (sometimes).
Sometimes you might not know your own “why’s” until you go into further reflection.
And sometimes the answer is going to be something along the lines of “Why not?”
Our obsession with answers and with knowing everything can lead us to dig a hole for ourselves.
My answers to that is that sometimes we are just not meant to know a why. Especially when we already have the facts.
Even though the obsession with knowing everything has nothing to do with our personal lives but more with work or general knowledge, the same applies. Often our need for control in our private lives reflects outside of it. Sometimes we are more controlling with those we love because we feel like we don’t have the grip on our work life.
Even though all of this is separate, everything intertwines.
On letting go of our grip on life,
To know everything, to control everything, to get everything to be perfect is grabbing life by the neck and pinning it down, not knowing that you have the wrong guy and you are actually pinning yourself down.
You are the only one believing this illusion of having everything under control.
Of knowing everything that is to be known.
The search for knowledge I feel is something intrinsic, but the desire of it out of fear of not fully having a grip on reality is different. The desire of knowledge to escape the reality that we live in is different.
The fear of being stressed is understandable but, in a way, irrational. With stress, we learn (that doesn’t mean that we learn everything, though).
We need to let life go a bit. I think she knows how to flow, and how to let you explore her in a healthy way.
We fill that by making everything perfect and to our liking we are making life better, but are we? Or are we hiding from the imperfections that need to be seen in that moment?
Prompts
- What aspects of yourself do you feel you have trouble controlling?
- How does your need for control reflect on your relationships with others?
- What is your fear in the acceptance of facts?
- Why do you always need the best option and not the one that fulfills its job?
Reflect on your relationship with control and how it has separated you from the flow of life and the imperfection of things that allow us to actually learn and grow. Allow yourself to learn and grow. Let life be a little less than perfect and there you will find its magic rather than constantly trying to correct it. The same applies to the people you love and your environments, open up to knowing their imperfections and allowing them to exist as they are. That is how you will truly know them and truly see them.
