When the idea of balance came up in classes, I asked my students to tell me how they thought the differences between control and balance would work out in life.
Students pointed out that control is a non-start. It can't happen given the reality of babies that cry in the night, cars that won't start in the morning, sudden rainstorms, and accidents, illness and death. No matter how obvious the lack of any real control seemed, they knew many people who worked very hard at control.[69] That makes sense. After all, if in reality we can't really achieve control, we would need to work very, very hard to hold on to the delusion that we can have control. Our perceived need for control comes, at least in part, from a having perspective on the world.
When we want control over ourselves and the world, we often first seek it through controlling other people. That makes sense—sort of. The dominator model meaning perspective teaches us that our authority in life exists because we can see its effect on others. However I may feel about myself and my life, if I can see my control in someone else, I can feel in control myself. A parental figure experiences a bad day for one reason or another. Bad days, so called, happen generally because we don't exercise real control over life or even ourselves, and we don't like it. When that person gets home, she/he may attempt to exert control over their partner and any child in her/his care. This control often consists of making demands and creating punishments that show power over the other and thus control over the other. Some in the class would point out that people who abuse others often exhibit little or no control over their own lives while these abusers demand more and more control over others. The deeper into a relationship, the more control they demanded. This is what happened to our young friend Stella and her bouncing ball (see The arbitrary nature of adult response and the confusion it brings—August 31, 2011).
Students also pointed out that even that sort of control, the control of physical or emotional brute force didn't really work. It stopped at appearances. The others involved with a controlling person may submit to the control out of fear, but they don't have to like it. They could think their own thoughts and feel their own feelings. Many seekers of control (dominators or abusers) intuitively know that and feel the need to strive for obvious control all the more.[70]
Most of us, we admit, attempt to control ourselves in a very similar way. We demand action from ourselves on some sort of immediate schedule, and when we don't live up to the standard of the internal dominator, we punish ourselves for our failure (see The problem of the "shoulds''—September 21, 2011. That's part of the dominator meaning perspective that has become a determining part of our lives. Paradoxically, when anyone attempts to control an abuser, a dominator, that abuser hates it and hates the person doing it down to the ground. The abuser may submit, but the hatred of the submission burns. External revenge may happen when the opportunity arrives. Internal resentment happens all the time.