Illusion of Control
Webster’s says scaffolding is "a temporary framework designed to support workers and materials during the construction, maintenance, or repair of buildings, bridges, and other man-made structures." Scaffolding holds you up temporarily. It braces your weight, props up your work—but it is not meant to last. I sit with people whose monuments of scaffolding pierce the sky grounded in precious little. When life’s difficulties happen they find themselves swaying in the stresses and longing for a grounded foundation.
OverControl is the scaffolding of our lives. We use technology to research, study and pick the perfect sippy cups, tutors, schools, locations, and places for dinner. We scaffold up great skyscrapers as a temple to our ability to manage our own lives well, to shield us from grief and heartache. Then the storms come and our metal frameworks sway. Our scaffolding isn’t designed to hold the human experience of pain and feeling.
We want to build foundations, not scaffolding.
Humans are designed with feelings, needs, desire, longings, and hope that are meant to be experienced through our humanness, not by our doing. We gain foundation and framework support by surrendering control. By admitting our best choices are what got us here, unfulfilled and longing.
There are those who are building something stronger than control:
The executives that sit in my office, naming the risk it requires to relinquish control for serenity.
The mothers who cry on my couch, desperately loving their children, yet grappling with the truth that freedom only comes from letting go.
So - what is stronger than human control?
Rooted structure. Inner architecture. The kind you don’t tear down when the job is done.
Our ways of coping and finding control do not just come out of nowhere. They develop slowly over time, habits and patterns so small they are often unnoticeable, until eventually, something breaks. Anxiety, overwhelm, depression, addiction, feeling stuck - these are all signs of unidentified control. At times, it’s the quiet, persistent whisper of wanting to do more or be more that serves as our signal.
If we do not name our control, it will control us.
We begin the work of building strong foundations by naming our stories and understanding where we came from. You live the way you do for a reason— perhaps your patterns were shaped by survival, not by choice. But you were never meant to carry it all alone.
The beauty in strong, old structures is often the story they tell, isn’t it? The hands that built them, the slow labor of putting the pieces together, and the artistry in their design tell us of a different time and years gone by. One of my favorite parts of my job is to help others build foundations that will stand the test of time. Ones that tell a story of healing, and courage — of people who chose to lay down control not in defeat, but in faith that something more whole, more enduring, could rise in its place.
Written by Beth Ann Mergens