And I’m not talking about the kind of present you get on Xmas morning.

I have been thinking about my relationship with time again lately, and how much I envy those with a very different one.

I am talking about the kind of people who don’t reflect on things. The people who just keep going forward and never look back. The people who learn from their mistakes without dwelling on them, and who can face the future boldly and without fear.

People who can live in the here and now.

That is, roughly, the exact opposite of me. I am always enveloped in the zone where overlearned lessons from the past meets unrealistic worries about the future overlap without ever truly being in the present.

It’s a non stop time warp.

I have talked before about why. Thinking types like myself need time to think things through and therefore hate situations where we have to make split-second decisions based on gut instinct.

Instinct is not our forte.

But I think this also connects with my thoughts about control. If you are always desperately trying to control outcomes, then you have to have time to think out a plan and use it to take control.

If, like me, your desire to control outcomes comes from a deep down mistrust of the universe, then the easy confidence of people who have faith in their own ability to cope with whatever life brings is not available to you.

On no level do you think everything will turn out for the best. Not without someone making sure it does, and seeing as you don’t trust anyone, that person has to be you.

Thus, the controlling person. It is a personality type which can lead to extraordinary power and success in the world when married to sufficient intelligence and drive. But it can create a serious problem.

Let’s call this problem the Micromanagement Paradox. The inability to believe that anything can be safe or good without you being in control of everything can lead to an inability to leave well enough alone. The individual in question becomes addicted to the feeling of control, the little spark of satisfaction that comes from making something “better”, and therefore constantly monitors, adjusts, nitpicks, and fiddles with things.

The result is that they very often end up breaking the system they worked so hard to build. The nervous, self-soothing habit of “adjusting” things ends up costing them the very thing they are trying to achieve.

This is especially true if some of the things they are trying to control are people.

But back to the subject.

This inability to live in the moment is very destructive. The very paranoia that fuels it is extremely draining. And the present moment is, in a very real sense, where we all live.

It is always now. Like the bumper sticker says, yesterday’s history, tomorrow’s a mystery, might as well live for today. If you can’t even relax and enjoy the moment while it lasts, then what is the point of all that control? You will never achieve a sense of safety that way.

You can only feel safe by relaxing your desire to control and to do that, you have to trust that things can work out fine without you having to control them.

Or at least, control them as much.

We return to my analogy of the police state. To the police state, the only way their citizens can be safe is if they are tightly controlled. If anything goes wrong, there is only one solution : tighter control.

So it is with the controlling kind of person. And remember, whether or not you are a controlling person has nothing to do with how much success you have had in your life.

In fact, your lack of success in life could be because you are too controlling. Instead of going out into situations you can’t control, you stay at home and do something you CAN control, and thus, can trust.

Like, say, writing a blog.

The prospect of living in the present terrifies me, and that is because of the implied lack of control. How can I trust that I will be okay if I am not constantly thinking about what comes next? Surely, the moment my guard is down, something terrible will happens and it will be all my fault.

Like I said before, it’s a superstition. A compulsion.

And it is impossible to feel safe when, deep down, you don’t even believe safety exists. You could be a billionaire surrounded by layer upon layer of the best security conceivable, crouched in a secret safe room that only you know exists, and you still would not feel safe because something always could go wrong.

So how does one overcome this repressive regime? How do you convince a rabid police state that they would have fewer rebellions if there were fewer rules and less control.

Because remember, this system does achieve its primary goal : safety. It is a rotten and miserable kind of safety, one that is arguably worse than anything that could happen without it, but it does deliver it.

So in order to overcome that system, you have to change priorities. Safety cannot be the primary goal of anyone’s life. Realistically speaking, it’s fairly easily achieved. Your rampant neuroses might tell you differently, but the truth of it is, you are likely quite safe and whatever enemy you are guarding against lost interest a long time ago, or never existed in the first place. And all that is keeping your oppressive regime going is its inability to recognize when its job is done.

Like those science fiction stories where people are living underground in a crushingly totalitarian society because the surface is radioactive from nuclear war. And then it turns out the radioactivity died out decades ago, and the powers that be suppressed the information because it was a threat to “stability”, in other words, their power.

The secret is to just open the door, take a deep breath, and realize you were free all along.

Then, figure out how to deal with that.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.