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 %CONTROL IMPRESSION IDENTITY DEATH DISEASE AGE SEX 911225

     It  is very trying to ourselves and to others for  us
to try to be in control of:  the impressions we make,  and
of our identity,  death, diseases,  age and sexuality.  It
is  hard  to learn the ill-defined boundaries between what
we can, and what we cannot control.  If we do not learn to
recognize when we have crossed the  ill-defined boundaries
in  our  trying to be in control,  we become ill and  dis-
eased because of our trying to be in control with what  we
do not have the power to control.

     If  we are preoccupied with how others view us,  what
they think about us, how the feel about us: we are tempted
to try to control those aspects of their being in relation
with us; but we cannot, and are frustrated in our efforts.
We  resist other people's efforts to control such  aspects
of our relations with us,  yet we expect them to yield  to
our  efforts to control such aspects or our relations with
them!

     Our  identity  is  conceived in  the  nature  of  our
intimate relationships with others.  We cannot control our
identity  without controlling our  intimate  relationships
with  others.   Yet,  when we try to control our  intimate
relationships, the trying destroys the intimacy, and it is
no  more,   for  we  are very trying to  those  who  might
otherwise be intimate with us.

     Our fear of mystery, paradoxes,  ignorance and limits
leads us to fear our own death;  and so we try to  control
death  by  postponing  coming to terms with  our  ultimate
limitations   in   not   being   able   to   control   the
disintegration  of our body.   In fear we pretend and give
the  impression that we are not ever going to die;  and so
do not come to terms with and do not deal wisely with  the
limits  within which we must learn to live gracefully  and
joyfully.   In our dishonesty we live without grace,  joy,
hope, or power to fulfill our true potentials.

     When  our trying to be in control makes us be ill-at-
ease  we  become  diseased;   and we try  to  control  our
diseases  with the kinds of fixes which preoccupied us  in
our  processes  of  becoming dis-eased.   We go  to  great
expense  to pay for medical fixes that do not fix,  and to
try to control what we cannot control through fixations.

     We  fear  the  aging process  because  it  represents
movement  towards  the  death  which  we  fear  we  cannot
prevent.   In our effort to control our appearances we try
to control all signs of our aging process, and pay greatly
for cosmetics, clothing, hair treatments and face-lifts to
appear not to be aging.

     Our  sexuality  represents the fact that we  are  not
eternal.  Through sexuality we come into being, not having
existed  eternally in the past.   We who have not  existed
externally  in  the  past try to ignore  the  signs  which
suggest  that we cannot expect to exist eternally into the
future.  Thus we pretend that our sexuality does not point
to our mortality,  yet we cannot control the fact that  we
desire to be intimate,  connected and sexually  fulfilled.
There  is  great  conflict  between our desire  to  be  in
control,  and our need for intimacy which is impossible in
the  presence  of dishonesty,  pretensions  and  collusive
games of mutual self deception.

                                                                                                                               
                         (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in      
                    (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy)  
                                                                                                                               
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