During the pandemic we’re all thinking about the loss of control. Most people dislike not having control, but sometimes you just have to give it up. For example, my former boss, Linda, doesn’t like to fly, and I flew with her once to a meeting in Dallas and we went through a horrific storm. The pilot sounded worried. We were bouncing around, people were screaming, and my boss grabbed my hand. The pilot gave short updates with no information about the state of the plane. I would have liked to hear him say, ”This isn’t the worst I’ve ever flown through,” but instead he said, “This is the absolute worst I’ve flown through.”
I noticed that my boss kept trying to steady the plane with her body. She’d move it around, like if we tilted right, she’d lean left and start pulling on her armrest. I said, “Linda, you’re not going to control the plane like that, you know. Only the pilot, the plane, and the weather are really in control here.”
Linda pondered that for a moment before responding. “You fly your way, I’ll fly mine.”
My way was to place complete faith in the pilot, the plane, and the weather. I wasn’t relaxed, but I was calm, and tried to think of the whole experience as something I was watching with interest, registering the bumps, cataloguing the screams of the passengers, checking whether the flight attendant seated in the jump seat across from me would smile when I caught her eye. I did that more than once. Eventually she stopped smiling, which I took as a sign only that I was getting annoying and she no longer found me cute.
On the other hand, some situations that I can’t control make me crazy. Take the pandemic. All I can do is read about it or get updates from TV, the internet, or my wife who occasionally weighs in with, Did you see this article about…? My attempts at control now are about setting up a fairly tight schedule for my day and sticking to it. The closer I get to the time I set, the happier I am. Like, today I said, up at 7a, read paper until 8:30a, walk for 20 minutes (around the yard…no way I’m leaving the property, ya know?) and then exercise and finish by 10a. When I finished, I looked at the clock in the kitchen. Ten am on the nose--I feel like I’m in complete control.
Then I took a shower and it wouldn’t drain, so the whole control thing went south.