When I was a kid, I used to really enjoy watching professional wrestling. I would watch both the World Wrestling Federation and the National Wrestling Alliance on television. I was a big fan of wrestlers like Ric Flair, Sting, Hulk Hogan, Macho Man Randy Savage, and The Junkyard Dog. As I grew older, I came to realize that professional wrestling was fake, but I still enjoyed the theatrics. The WWF used to have one over the top character named Brother Love who would host a weekly segment between matches. Brother Love was a fake evangelist that would come out every week and proclaim “I love you” to everyone in attendance. I can remember one segment where he said that if you have no love, you have no control. This had no impact on me as a child, but as I look back and reflect, I wonder if he was on to something.
I wonder if there’s really a correlation between love and control. I imagine if you polled a large number of people, you might get differing opinions. Some might say that they must take care of and provide for their loved ones, and to do so, they feel they must be in control. I’ve fallen victim to this mindset myself. As a parent, I’ve felt that I needed to be in control of every aspect of my child’s development to show them how much I love them. Of course, as my daughter has gotten older, she has developed into her own person and thus began taking control of her own life. Just because she has made decisions that were out of my control hasn’t caused me to love her any less. If you truly love someone, you can’t control them. Instead, you must give them the freedom to be themselves and ensure they know you love them no matter what.
On the other side of the love and control spectrum, I’ve seen folks totally lose control while being in love. Some people can get so engulfed in the emotion of being in love, that they lose themselves in the other person or the relationship. I’m not afraid to admit that this has happened to me in the past. I’ve made some questionable decisions under the guise of love. I’ve had folks ask me what I was thinking or how come I didn’t see where a situation was headed, in reference to a past failed relationship. When you’re in love, you don’t always have foresight to look down the road. You’re caught up in the moment and the high that love provides, that you lose the ability to think clearly, and subsequently surrender control.
So that brings me back to the good Brother Love and his message of no love, no control. Was his message true or just hyperbole? I think there is some truth to his message, but not in the ways I outlined earlier. I believe we need to focus on loving ourselves first before we can love someone else in a healthy manner. Most times we tend to project onto others how we feel about ourselves. So, if we struggle loving ourselves, we’re going to struggle loving someone else. With that thought in mind, without the love and knowledge of self, I believe we do enter the risk of lacking control of our lives. I know I’ve had to exorcise some demons in my own life to get to a place of real self-love. Now that I’ve gotten to that place, I feel that I’m in a better place to give love to others. So, when it comes to love and control, I’ll end it with this quote. “Focus on what you can control and let go of what you can’t.” Once you accept that, you’ll be in a great position of love.
As always,
Kings Can Move On yall