A Matter of Control

I moved out of my mom’s house when I was 18, during the last century.

Since then, she has come to see me, wherever I have lived, far more often than I have gone to visit her.

She has always been my greatest supporter and best friend.

Everything she has ever done has been in my best interest.

Last Sunday, she and my stepfather moved to Conrad.

Finally, she is visiting permanently.

My lifelong backstop is nearby. I can stop in for coffee and a quick update or enjoy deeper, face-to-face conversations.

They join my mom’s sister and my uncle who moved to Conrad from Mississippi last August.

My friendship with them has finally bloomed.

For years, I’ve said that Conrad, not Machu Pichu, is the belly button of the universe, the magnet for happiness and enlightenment.

Every U-Haul and moving truck that pulls into town confirms my pontifications.

Yet even the residents of Conrad face the uncertainties of creating a new life -- finding a new dentist, making new friends, establishing new routines.

They face the enormous challenge of maintaining control of their lives.

Ranchers are used to facing uncertainty, but it still is not easy.

Most of us have life’s basics down pat. We have a dentist, a few friends and established routines, but the weather and commodity markets loom large, unpredictable and uncontrollable.

It’s as if we all are carrying a writhing mass of snakes, not allowing ourselves to drop a single one.

We concentrate. We gather in one snake and then another. We shift the writhing heap, roll it over, grab for a slithering tail.

We are going to fail; it’s only a matter of time. Yet still we work to desperately control the uncontrollable.

Families are not the only control freaks.

The Conrad School District proposed an attendance policy recently.

The policy lowers a student’s grades if he misses too much school.

This policy is silly.

Only a handful of kids miss school chronically. This policy of punishment will not convince them to attend.

Research shows that seat time does not equate to learning.

As our entire business world, economy and culture moves toward working out of the office and measuring success by the quality of work completed instead of quantity of time spent, the local school hangs on to the writhing mass of snakes of mandatory attendance for no justified reason.

The solution to kids attending school is in encouraging strong relationships.

This misguided policy is all about adult control, not student success.

Our instinct to make a less-powerful person conform, organize our space and structure our time is stronger than every other instinct except drinking and eating.

Our need to be safe compels us to attempt to control our environment and the people around us.

Yet, if we let go just a little, if we build stronger relationships and encourage personal agency, we can protect one another far better.

If we drop that writhing mass of snakes we try so desperately to hang on to, they will slither away under rocks, just as afraid of us as we are of them.

Still, we resist.

Until the universe just can’t stand it anymore.

On Sunday, the movers unloaded my mom’s household goods.

Monday morning, a grizzly bear wandered within 75 yards of her new home.

He was a teenaged bear searching for new territory, looking for food, water and safety.

The message was clear to me.

Let go of the mass of snakes.

Take care of the people you love.

Allow mess.

Allow agency.

Allow happiness in.

My stepfather said it best:

“We used to have to worry about skunks.”