Control & Nonviolence

Editor’s Note: Regular readers of Dark Matter will recall Lynne McFarland’s previous appearances among us. She is my neighbor. We met many years ago when she bought a book at one of our yard sales, and then we we met again more recently at a police station when we both showed up to support Justin Jones, who’d been wrongly accused and wrongly charged with a crime. I have come to think of her as a kind of mentor. I am amazed by her wit, her passion, her prophetic candor, and her writing. I eagerly await her public posts on Facebook and sometimes reprint them here with her permission. She gave us “Let’s Break Free” and “The Other Side Of Rage,” and now we have another one to consider. The photo above comes from the Polish photographer Jacek Stankiewicz.

You may think this is gonna be a lighthearted post, with the little bossy bird, my spirit animal, and all. Prolly not.

I really like to be in control.

Memories from childhood with my stuffed animals, which I would arrange in a circle around me, and assign roles in the society I designed. The biggest and probably the oldest animal was a purple rabbit named Fury, who was the “benign leader” of the crew, basically a stand-in for me. I still marvel that I named him that. What did I know about myself then?

Fast forward to being seventeen and having a big argument with my father in the doorway between the hall and the living room over a blouse that I wanted to wear to a prospective college interview and he determined that I would not. My blind great aunt Margie, listening from the next room, told me I had “some of my father” in me to which I replied, “no, none of him.” He really liked to be in control. He was like that ever since childhood, too. Relatives had stories.

Several cringe memories as a team leader of a camping program in which I worked with children with emotional disturbances (probably many of these children had parents who really liked to be in control) when teammates had to comment on my leadership behaviors (you can guess).

In motherhood, my daughter, then a child, commenting to me that she really loved it when I said I was wrong.

And now, here I am a 78-year-old woman, while studying nonviolence, aware of my continuing desire to Control Stuff.

For a young couple I know whose emotional defenses have got the best of them, there is a part of me that wants to say, “Let me tell you what to do.”

But now I also see that the urge to control is actually itself a form of force, of violence, if you will. As would also be a desire to punish this struggling family (I really don’t comprehend why we want to punish people who are struggling, but we do, we seek to somehow make it their own fault), or to withdraw my affection for them, or to manipulate their circumstances to bend their course as I would like to see it go. Control’s violence has lots of flavors.

I breathe for a while. Do the part of the Presksaa meditation in which I simply observe my emotions. Slowly I enter a different space.

Let me gather my stuffed animals around in a circle, but instead of assigning them roles and putting Fury in charge as Benign Leader, let us move into a clearing together where we tell our stories.

Let me meet my father in the doorway and see the fear beneath his rage and see the freedom I am seeking beneath my rage.

Let me sit around the campfire with my teammates and listen to them as they quietly speak to me.

Let me embrace my daughter who wants to come closer.

And right now, especially, let me support my friends who are struggling, let me lower my bossy wing, silence my bossy bird cry, and offer them a juicy worm for a nice treat instead.