On Control

Despite appearances to the contrary, I consider myself to be a very stable, level-headed fellow. It is actually a point of pride to treat any given situation with a cool, rational eye and judge it with a hand of complete control on emotion and baser aspects of my humanity.

However, I myself am often surprised by the complexities of human psychology, including my own.

There was an incident a couple of nights ago. The smallest of things, really. Late at night, returning home from a poker tournament, I was just entering my dorm when I ran into a girl, a friend of mine. Now, to understand this, you must be aware of a couple things. Though she is my friend, we are not close by any stretch of the imagination. We talk on the rare occasions that we run into each other, but we do not seek out each other for company. In this past, we went on one - ONE - date, which did not work out. As you might guess, she is not heavy on my mind at any given time. Wholly unremarkable, save for the fact that she has a good heart and is really, extraordinarily hot.

So, I run into this girl, who is going clubbing on Franklin (this being a Thursday night, and all), accompanied by a rather strapping young man, who I can only assume is a new boyfriend. A fully innocuous meeting that lasted all of sixty seconds.

And it put me in a funk.

I couldn't exactly tell you why in any way that makes sense. Truth be told, that may be the most upsetting part of the whole affair; I have no real idea what truly brought on this strange melancholy.

I learned relatively early on in life to keep a leash on emotion. This is not to say that I restrain emotional investment in most anything. In fact, I think most of us would agree that I'm rather free with my feelings, all else being equal. Rather, I have found it useful and often necessary to be able to distance myself in certain situations. A comparison could be made to the patron of a bar who when drinking socially has a wonderful time and enjoys life to the fullest, yet sometimes gets in over his head and needs to be cut off by the bartender.

Despite this extensive training at very capable (and anonymous) hands, I am constantly reminded that control over oneself is at best a flawed ideal. I would venture to guess that it is something of a struggle for all people, admittedly at different degrees.

Are there situations in which the rational mind can be completely overwhelmed and one is dominated completely by sentiment? Is it possible to enjoy all of the fruits of love and passion and fury, yet still train oneself to be rid of them when need be? If we could train ourselves this way, should we?

I am forced to hope that it is possible to achieve. Otherwise, we are forced to face the idea of living at the mercy of forces beyond our control, something which I am not prepared to accept without a fight.

There are many incidents in my life, in your lives that speak to you on that uncontrolled, uncontrollable level. You cannot stop them, no matter how you try. Can you? You want. You need. You hate. You miss. You laugh. You love.

And so do I.