I don’t think I ever would have called myself controlling. Not in the way we imagine it—tight fists, rigid plans, needing everything to go exactly right. I’ve always seen myself as someone who flows, someone who listens, someone who adapts. But lately, I’ve been sitting with something quieter. A realisation that didn’t arrive all at once, but slowly… like a thought that kept returning until I finally stopped to listen.
And strangely enough, it started with AI.
There’s so much resistance around it right now. So much fear woven into the conversation, like it’s something that’s going to take over, replace us, unravel everything we understand about the world. And maybe some of that unease is natural—we tend to pull back from what we don’t fully understand. But the more I’ve watched people react to it, the more it’s felt like something deeper than that.
It doesn’t feel like fear of AI.
It feels like fear of losing control.
Because when you strip it back, it’s just a tool. Something we interact with. Something that reflects what we bring to it. Something we can learn from. And yet the reaction to it has been so strong, so emotional, almost defensive… as if it’s threatening something fundamental.
And maybe it is.
Maybe it’s pressing on that part of us that wants to understand everything, predict everything, stay just one step ahead of whatever might come next. That part of us that wants to feel safe… by feeling in control.
When I turned that inward, I could feel it in myself, too. Not loudly, but in a small, almost invisible way. The pause before a decision. The need to think something through just a little longer. The quiet waiting for the “right” moment. Not because I don’t trust life… but because I want to feel safe inside of it.
And I don’t think I’m alone in that.
I think control lives in all of us, but it doesn’t always look the way we expect it to. It’s softer than that. Quieter. It shows up dressed as responsibility, as logic, as patience… when sometimes it’s just fear wearing a more acceptable face.
Religion has always offered an answer to that—let go, let God, trust the plan. And there is something deeply comforting in the idea of handing everything over to something greater. But if I’m being honest, I don’t think we ever fully do it. Even the most devoted among us still hold on in subtle ways, still try to shape the outcome, still hope it unfolds the way we want it to.
I know I do.
Because true surrender—the kind where you move forward without needing reassurance, without needing signs, without needing a guarantee—feels a lot like stepping into the unknown with your eyes wide open and trusting that something will catch you.
And everything in us resists that.
We live in a world of rules and expectations, of invisible lines that tell us how far we can go before it becomes too much, too risky, too unrealistic. So we adjust. We soften what we really want. We reshape our lives into something more acceptable, more explainable… more controlled. Even when there’s a part of us that knows.
I believe we’re all born with that knowing. A quiet pull toward what feels right, even if it doesn’t make sense. But over time, we learn to question it. We layer logic over instinct, fear over curiosity, control over trust.
Because it feels safer that way.
But the truth I keep coming back to is this—we don’t actually have control. Not over time, not over outcomes, not over what happens once we take the step. We only ever have the step itself. And yet we spend so much of our lives waiting until that step feels safe enough to take, as if safety is something we can guarantee before we begin.
Maybe that’s the illusion.
Maybe letting go isn’t something that happens all at once, and maybe it’s not something we ever fully master. Maybe it’s something we practice. In small, quiet ways. In the moments where we choose to move anyway, to trust anyway, to follow that inner knowing even when it doesn’t make sense to anyone else.
Because we only get this life. One.
And somewhere inside each of us, there’s a version of our life waiting—not for certainty, not for permission… just for us to let go enough to begin. ♥️