Control, Responsibility And The Disconnect Between Them

Most people desire control without the responsibility that comes with it.

I had a conversation with my Dad yesterday and he said something, he stated an observation, one that I’ve known for a while, but never heard it articulated so clearly. I can’t recall the words exactly, but here it is, paraphrased:

More control means more responsibility.

Now I’ve known for two decades that I don’t want control over other people, places or things. I don’t want to control anyone or anything. I’ve been there. I’ve tried to control things and my experience was frustrating, disappointing, unnerving. I have a hard enough time just controlling my own body. I think I might have control over 1% of my body, and I’m pretty sure that if I had more control, that I’d screw things up pretty good.

I see control as an illusion. I recognize, from years of reading science, that we’re just a buzzing collection of atoms and subatomic particles that no one has ever really seen directly, with their eyes. We can infer their existence through the fantastic instruments we have built, like particle accelerators and scanning tunneling electron microscopes, but we can’t see them with our own eyes. I don’t think we’re built for that, and there is a really good reason for our limitations of perception. Our perception of reality is limited so that we can survive.