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TITLE: Pantyhose | Previous Challenge Entry
By Sara Chappel
02/02/06
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Pantyhose

Why is it that when I think about the word "control" my mind immediately turns to pantyhose? Perhaps because I'm a typical twenty-first-century female. Probably because I possess more than my fair share of vanity. I have launched mammoth struggles to squeeze into these prisons of Lycra, attempting to wrestle my various wobbly bits into submission, at least for a little while. When I wear control-top pantyhose, I look ten pounds skinnier than I am. Not only do my wobbly bits not wobble, you'd be hard pressed to notice that I ever had them in the first place.

Control is an illusion.

Whether related to pantyhose or a more profound assumption that we can, somehow, influence various elements of our lives, control is little more than self-deception masquerading as competence. The second Noble Truth of the Buddha tells us that suffering is caused by desire - desire for material goods, desire for people, desire to accomplish certain things during our existence. What is desire, really, but a need for control - a need to feel like things are going according to our wishes, that we are not at the mercy of either random chance or a faceless omnipotence. People tend to cling to the notion that they are able to control the events in their life: we embark on educational paths, careers, relationships with a comforting semblance of free will. I believe that humans possess free will - a gift from God - but free will and control are not the same thing. We are certainly free to make choices, both good and evil, but the fact that we are able to choose by no means guarantees our control over the choices presented to us.

This idea is never clearer to me, personally, than when I'm sick. I have a nasty cold right now, which has come upon me at a particularly inconvenient time. I have no choice but to wait out the cavalcade of disgusting symptoms as my body heals itself, and, frustratingly, this is a process over which I have absolutely no control. We, as humans, are at the mercy of our bodies and their vulnerability to disease, famine, thirst, and the vagaries of nature. How out-of-control we feel when faced with the serious illness of a loved one, or a natural disaster. We're not, actually, out of control, because we were never in control to begin with.

Much of the teachings of Buddhism centre on the need to relinquish the illusions of control. Funnily enough, so do many of the teachings of Christianity. How in-control were James and John when they were confronted by Jesus' inexorable call? Peter sank when he tried to walk on water, simply because he couldn't trust, couldn't let go of the need to control. It's nice to know, when giving up the illusion of control is difficult, that many have gone before us and struggled in the same way.

We don't have to worry about being in control, because Someone else is.

Secular types often deride those of us with deeply-held faiths as brainwashed morons, willing to let some mythological father-figure speak to us from beyond the grave and tell us what to do. We are often seen as passive sorts who don't possess the wherewithal to maintain control of our lives in the big scary world. (I'd like to see someone try and make that argument to St. Augustine or C.S. Lewis.) It is ironic, isn't it, that those who seem to have the most control over their lives - those with wealth, status, or celebrity- are, in effect, being controlled themselves by society and all its unrealistic expectations. The nasty, petty side of me wants to say, quietly, elegantly, "Nyah nyah nyah nyahhhh nyahhh." Funnily enough, this side of me becomes somewhat more pronounced when I've been wearing pantyhose for extended periods of time.

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