Losing Control

The other day my sister E. and I were spending a lovely weekend hour conversing about nothing and everything.

"You have always had control issues," she said (or something like that). "It's interesting to me because I've never felt the need to have so much control, the way you do."

"Do you know about internal vs. external locus of control?" I asked.

***

The extent to which I feel out of control correlates strongly with the rise and fall of depression. It's not clear to me that one causes the other. It's more like they are iterating functions of each other, spiraling into fractal-formed waves of fatalism.

Here is your task. If you complete your task successfully, you will be rewarded. If not, you will be punished. Nothing you do will affect whether or not your task is deemed successful. Go.

***

I'm going to motivate you now.

If you accomplish the task I assign to you, I will give you $30 million.

You're motivated now, right? That's a really good reward, right?

Here's your task: Raise one of your great-great-great-grandmothers from the dead.

What's the problem? Don't you want the reward? Don't you care? You'll have $30 million!!! Why aren't you motivated?

I motivated you, damn it. Stop being so negative.

***

What's the point? Why? What for?

It won't work. I can't. It's not in my control.

Who gives a fuck?