Beyond Control

We have virtually no control over the external event, situations, behaviour of others or their deeds. No husband can control the wife, no mother can control the son or daughter beyond a certain age. ‘Can’ should be replaced here by the word ‘should.’ But when we refuse to appreciate that we should not try to own or control anyone, then nature in its infinite wisdom teaches us that we cannot even do that. But we feel hostile to the other’s refusal to be owned in the name of care or love. This hostility when expressed triggers the other’s obstinacy and promptly leads to being alienated. Now both feel that the other is responsible for this alienation due to errors of omission and commission. Nobody is willing to take responsibility for our inability to dissolve our initial hurt which was caused by our lack of understanding the laws of living and loving which made us want the other person to function as per our own desired mental pattern. This amounts to an immoral act of treating the other as an object which no human can or should tolerate. Our desire-bank becomes a burden for that person whom we claim to love. But we believe that our desire and expectation is our birth right, especially in close relations like marriage, etc. We are invited into her life just like a guest. But we want to own her. Promptly, she disowns us. We must remember the words of Anne Borough Lindbergh – “Him who I love, I must set free even from me.” But we become insensitive to a point where we impose our demands. Do we do that when we stay as a guest in somebody’s house? Do we try to correct every wrong we see there? But we do just that in the lives of the ones we claim to cherish. Your hurt, your anger, your disappointment is your problem, period. It has nothing really to do with what the other says or does. In fact, we must be grateful to the other for exposing us to our own lack of growth and love. In that sense, the other and her behaviour is like our Guru. 

Somebody asked me recently, “Anjan, what does it mean if a person finds not even one Guru in his/her entire lifetime?” Well, it only means that he/she did not find even one person who he/she felt could be wiser than him/her. Every event, situation, our reaction, our hurt, our anger, our feeling let-down can become our Guru, if we wish to see it that way. But we go all out to search for someone on whom we can place the entire blame. We play the ‘blame-game’ not realising even once that in this game there is no other player on the other side.