Letting go.
Control offers a peculiar kind of comfort.
It makes you believe that as long as you stay on top of everything, nothing can fall apart. That if you stay organised enough, prepared enough, disciplined enough, life will be ok. It creates the illusion that your grip is the one thing preventing chaos.
Sailors understand this instinct well. In rough water, the inexperienced hand grips the tiller harder, believing tighter control will steady the boat. But overcorrection creates instability. The boat begins to fight itself. Direction is lost not through ease, but by gripping too hard. The experienced sailor holds lightly. Responsive, but not rigid. Allowing the vessel to move with the water rather than against it.
But control is rarely what it appears to be. It is an arrangement you make with uncertainty. A quiet belief that if you anticipate enough and manage enough, nothing unwanted will reach you. The mind stays alert. The body stays braced. You remain positioned just ahead of disruption, trying to outpace it.
What it produces is not peace, but stress. A constant low-grade tension. The nervous system never fully stands down because it believes something, somewhere, still requires your management.
And so what happens is we become fully absorbed in perfecting our lives that we forget to actually live them. The focus shifts entirely to optimisation. Fixing. Refining. Preparing. Life becomes something just out of reach, always waiting on the other side of the illusion of control.
You’re scared to let go in fear of losing control. But you never had control in the first place. All you have is anxiety.
Letting go is the answer.
Control was never the force holding you together. It was the story that kept you holding on. What actually holds you is simpler. Your presence. Your willingness to meet life as it is, rather than exhausting yourself as you desperately hold onto the tiller.
What begins to change is not the external world, but your relationship to what you feel internally. Instead of suppressing discomfort or trying to outmanoeuvre uncertainty, you allow it. You stop resisting the sensation of fear, tension, or instability. And without resistance, something unexpected happens. The feeling moves. The nervous system resolves what it was previously holding in place. The energy you spent on control returns to you as clarity and strength.
You still act. You still take responsibility for what sits within your reach. But you stop carrying what was never yours.
And in that moment, life is no longer something you are preparing to live.
It is something you are finally inside.
