Commitment, part dos

They call me a control freak because I:

…like my clothes hung up in color order in my closet.
…don’t like games of chance.
…appreciate a well organized purse.
…frown upon not being able to do things myself.

I don’t consider myself a control freak because, while I do all of the above, I don’t take control of the most important things in life. I pay attention to minute details of random and mostly meaningless things while I surrender control of the bigger things; the things that matter.

I control the small things because it’s easier. They require less effort. Less skill. Less courage.

I control the little things to distract me from all that I don’t control; and not because I can’t control them, but because I’m afraid to. What if I make a mistake? Go right when I should have gone left? Swallow the blue pill instead of the red?

It’s easier to surrender control than it is to admit defeat. Or error. Or fear.

They ignore the fact that, while my closet looks like a rainbow, I turn down games of “Sorry,” have a streamlined purse, and do things myself that, I also leave life’s more crucial issues to chance. I close my eyes and slowly drift where ever it is that the stream may take me. Only my stream doesn’t flow through adventure or excitement or anywhere of even the slightest note.

My stream flows through comfortable. Through average. Through easy.

And it’s been okay for a long time now, and life has seemed…okay. Only I’m finding out that comfortable isn’t fulfilling. And neither is average. And easy, well it’s just a joke.

It’s funny when you’re floating down a stream and you’re still able to watch life pass you by.

Funny in a sick-to-your-stomach, lump-in-your-throat, someone’s-sitting- in-your-chest sort of way.

Which, funny, isn’t funny at all.

In my quiet moments I know that my color organized closet is a masquerade for the lack of control I take. I wear my “anti-games-of-chance” mask with a half-grin. And my purse is only a cover for a life less lived. My desire to do things myself, however, is the only reason I know I could take control if I really wanted to. If I were brave enough. It is the one thing that gives me confidence that if I were ready to, I could shake the world right off its axis.

And sometimes that is enough.

But I’m starting to realize that simply knowing I could doesn’t render the same results as actually doing.

Knowing means nothing if you’re not doing.

And so far there hasn’t been much doing.

And so it’s beginning to feel like nothing.

But the water is getting chilly enough to make me want to get out. All I have to do is…

Do it.