One day I drive by my friend Sandy’s favorite shop and I get to thinking about her. Specifically how much she annoys me. Often. Alot. Then I realize I’m in the car alone, Sandy is no where near by, we haven’t even talked in a few weeks…In other words, there is only one place all this venom can be coming from and it’s not from Sandy, it’s from me.

So why, why , why is it that Sandy gets on my nerves so much? It hits me like a ton of bricks –Sandy is completely ‘out of control’. She doesn’t take birth control, even though she doesn’t want kids, leaving pregnancy to chance. She says she will do well in school but starts doing poorly one semester in. She has never had a ‘real’ job.She can’t even control staying awake when she comes to hang-out at our house. She mooches, not taking responsibility for being financially in control. Worst of all, despite being totally out of control, she always lands on her feet.

For me, self control isn’t just a critical part of my identity, it’s a moral virtue. I was someone who worked-out 3X a day to control my body, I kept meticulous spreadsheets and budgets to control our finances, I maxed-out my retirement account at my first job even though I could barely afford my rent, I was thinking about padding university applications before I even wore a bra (padded or otherwise)… I lived and breathed a constant, painful, fight for control. Clearly, I could not just give Sandy a pass.  I had to see ‘out of control’ Sandy as a failure, as a terrible person in order to be a contrast to my own buttoned-up awesomeness; to do otherwise would undermine my sense of value, my sense of self.  

The even bigger problem is, Sandy challenges my sense of order in the universe, undermines my sense of safety and justness. It’s not like I worked so hard to control because it was fun, easy, rewarding. I did it because somewhere in my brain I believed that control was an antidote to impermanence. That if I just managed my body, managed my money, managed my education, I would be safe, I would have certainty, I would be prepared. But Sandy keeps being OK. Everytime she doesn’t get pregnant, everytime she ‘finds’ money, passes a class without studying, I feel a stabbing sense of injustice,  because my version of cause and effect (control=safe and happy outcomes) is fair and Sandy, well that whole thing just isn’t right!!!

When I look back at this story, I see how many wrong views there were about Karma, cause and effect, but those contemplations did not come until a bit later. Here though, what I saw is its me, my definition of virtue that drives my annoyance at Sandy. It’s my need to reinforce my own sense of self and sense of order, my own wrong views, that force me to be so critical of Sandy. So Sandy is back on the scene, only not really, since I was alone, in my car, creating all that pain by myself. The most ironic part of the story though is this, if control is such a virtue and I had already begun to see the limitations of my own control, what kind of terrible failure was I? Forget Sandy, by my own definition, I’m the real villain in this story.