Control freak

From childhood onwards we have been directly or indirectly encouraged to be not a control freak. One of the popular, rather irritating topics given to students is to speak on was ‘If I would become prime minister, what would I do?” The funny thing is that even that speech was written by some teacher, who had given shape to his or her unfulfilled dreams and frustrations.

Due to the pressure from parents, friends, teachers and the society, our life has indeed become the pressure cooker as Rajkumar Hirani points out. Everyone tries to control us, sometimes in the name of protecting us other times for the sake of the better world (others).

Then when we grow up, everyone says we need to control our life. Academicians articulate that the locus of control must be internal. But when did they train us to take control over our life? The joke is that guys who tell us to take control are the ones who are controlled most, either they are controlled by an idea which was not invented by them or by other sale personnel.

Yet few of us manage to become control freaks. They must be mutants, they are not functioning as per the program, and as per the way they have been brain-washed. They are the outcasts, trying to live life as per their desires and compulsions.

When I am around control freaks, I am both liberated and suffocated. It is liberating because one more joker has joined the chain of the control system which have been guiding (or misguiding) my life. And it is also suffocating because one more person is acting as if he is carrying my weight.

But I truly appreciate them; at least they make efforts to shape the world as per their convenience. If a group has many control freaks, fights and quarrels will be the only entertainment. In case of it having only one control freak, he will be seen as the leader and liberator. If there are no control freaks, then the group will be subjugated by another group that has one control freak.

Successful leadership means that one has to be a control freak as well as side-track or eliminate all other control freaks. Either through persuasion (asking him to leave and join some other department/company) or spoiling their names and making them unpopular (eliminating them). The best control freak is the one who creates the illusion that everyone believes that he or she is obeying out of free-will.