When Life Spins out of Control
How Do You Find Your Footing When You Lose Control
Anxiety chases away sleep at 3 a.m. My stomach is in knots. I’m swimming in that familiar ocean again with my head barely above water. This time it’s not the cancer that casts me adrift, it’s the worry over my sons. Two of them are in the film industry, which has shut down; two own businesses with responsibility for others. They’ve all been struck by a wave, pulled out to sea by currents they can’t control. Stories like theirs proliferate. A woman in line at Armstrong Nursery tells us she is losing her restaurant after forty-five years. Will ordering take-out more often be enough to turn the tide? I feel like we are on the cusp of the loss and devastation.
We’re experiencing cognitive dissonance. One moment we are living in an age of control. From on demand viewing to customized purchases, we believe in choice and self-reliance. We are competent, efficient, and resourceful. The next moment we’re hit with the coronavirus and respond in predictable ways: search the internet, stay glued to the news, repeat the same talking points, shop, hoard, you name it. Why is online shopping, even for Clorox wipes, so satisfying? Am I losing my mind? Our response is shallow and hollow, but it’s human to meet the unpredictable with behaviors of control.
From ancient times to today, a common response to being out of control is to do something: placate the gods, consult fortune tellers, develop piety, save up for a rainy day, etc. My dad, born in 1916, endured The Great Depression, which stayed with him his entire adult life. He was both extremely frugal and an occasional binge shopper of sales. A favorite memory of growing up as an American child in Germany with limited resources is the quarterly visits my dad made to the American PX, the tax-free grocery store on military bases when 500,000 American troops occupied West Germany. The kitchen table was laden with the plenty of American food and candy before it was stocked in the pantry and my dad’s closet. He placed boxes of Charm suckers in shiny wrappers and Mounds bars that I could smell high in his closet, though I figured out how to get them with a precarious climb and reach. These moments of plenty fulfilled our longing for American goods in a foreign land of pork, potatoes, and marzipan. As a child, I had a little toy grocery store which I would endlessly stock, organize, and rearrange. I loved the satisfaction of plenty, and to this day I enjoy stocking up on essentials.
Stocking up offers a comfort-feeling of being prepared for the future, but this control is a thin reprieve from the terror of the untamable. To live well and deeply, we need more than these surface comforts; we need to find our proper place in this world. I love bears, especially grizzly bears. I once bought a book called The Mark of the Grizzly after trudging along the trail to Granite Lodge in Glacier National Park. Right there in the store I read about an attack on that same trail of a photographer who stepped into the forest to relieve himself. Reading about bear encounters both scares and fascinates me because of the unpredictability of bear behavior.
My son Alex and I later visited Brooks Falls in Alaska on a float plane in a rainstorm through imposing mountain passes. It’s a unique place with viewing platforms of grizzlies in close proximity with people watching the social hierarchy of bears as they hunt salmon swimming and jumping upstream. Alex and I spent hours observing and nicknaming the bears. On our way back to the plane through a forested area inhabited by bears, we were caught in a close encounter with a mama bear protecting her three cubs from and an opportunistic male sniffing out a shortcut to the hard work of fishing for salmon. Alex snapped the encounter on a camera lifted high over his head. That day ranks as a favorite day in my life. The fear, mystery, and awe we experienced shifted our perspective and sense of place in life.
Control has to do with position: putting myself in a position over life’s fearful circumstances. Control is a posture of pride and pretense. C.S. Lewis makes a fascinating connection between the magic of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and modern science which also developed during that time, claiming “[t]here is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the ‘wisdom’ of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike, the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique” (Lewis, 77). Tim Keller comments on Lewis’s connection: “Instead of trying to shape our desires to fit reality, we now seek to control and shape reality to fit our desire” (Keller, 71). Modernity is about dreams of power and control, which are realized in times of normalcy but not when a catastrophes strike.
Inevitably, we get knocked off the tower of control. As I write this, a news flash jolts me: “The DOW plummets more than 1,300 points, wiping out gains since President Trump was inaugurated.” How do we cope with the plummets, knocks, and waves? Let’s reestablish our footing as people who look up, not down with hubris. Let’s accept our humble and needy position with a sense of our place in this world in the face of the bears we can’t control.
I hear the whispering reminder: “Be still and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10).
For further encouragement click this link to an online talk my friend Tracey gave to her house church at Pepperdine University:
Sources cited:
Keller, Timothy. The Reason for God. Dutton, 2008.
Lewis, C.S. The Abolition of Man. Harper, 1974.