As I was falling asleep last night, I had a thought. And like all thoughts as I fall asleep, about fifty percent of the time they are insightful and the other half they are foolish. I’m not sure which side this will fall out on, but wanted to flesh it out a bit in writing to see where things end up.
The thought that I came up with is that if there was absolute control, there could be no freedom.
I was wishing that I had absolute control of outcomes in my world, and as I thought about this for a moment, I realized that if I would have absolute control, so would everyone else, which would mean that ultimately, I would have to give up my own freedom at the expense of this hypothetical control.
This still seems to hold up logically today. And thinking a bit more about it, from the perspective of a continuum of control versus freedom, we have control of certain things and not others, and in turn, we have more or less freedom depending on how much control we maintain.
It is kind of the opposite of what I would have expected. I would have thought that through control of parts of my life or impacts to my life, that would have provided freedom. But in truth, what it gives is security. And in taking control of things, it actual curtails my freedom of movement, since something controlled needs to be kept under control, which manifests as a restriction, or lack of freedom, to me.
I think I will work on giving up more control over outcomes, and see what kind of additional freedom that brings to me.