Control Is an Illusion I Had to Unlearn

I didn’t think I was controlling.

I thought I was responsible.
Prepared.
Careful.

Control felt like maturity.

Then travel started poking holes in that story.

Flights got delayed.
Plans fell apart.
Weather ignored forecasts.

And nothing terrible happened.

That bothered me more than it should have.

I realized how much energy I spent trying to predict outcomes.

Where I would be.
What would happen next.
How things should go.

Travel didn’t allow that.

You miss a bus.
You wait.
You adjust.

No drama.
No collapse.

Just reality.

At first, I resisted.

I kept planning harder.
Double-checking routes.
Overthinking timing.

It didn’t help.

So I tried something else.

I stopped fighting uncertainty.

That felt uncomfortable.

When you let go of control, a few things surface fast:

• Anxiety you didn’t know you were carrying
• A fear of wasting time
• A belief that mistakes define you

Travel made those visible.

Standing in unfamiliar places without a backup plan forced honesty.

I noticed how tense I was when things didn’t go my way.
How quickly I blamed myself.
How often I thought, this shouldn’t be happening.

But it was happening.

Whether I approved or not.

Slowly, something shifted.

I started leaving space in my days.
Not planning every hour.
Not fixing every outcome.

And something surprising happened.

Things still worked out.

Sometimes better.

I met people because plans changed.
I found places I wasn’t searching for.
I rested instead of pushing.

Control had been blocking those moments.

I think I confused control with safety.

But safety doesn’t come from managing everything.

It comes from trusting yourself to adapt.

Travel taught me that adaptability matters more than precision.

You don’t need certainty to move forward.
You need awareness.
You need flexibility.

That lesson followed me home.

Now when things feel messy, I pause.

I ask:

Am I trying to control this out of fear?
What happens if I allow this moment to unfold?
Do I actually need to fix this right now?

Sometimes the answer is no.

Letting go doesn’t mean giving up.

It means choosing presence over tension.

I still plan.
I still care.

But I don’t grip life as tightly.

Because control was never real.

And unlearning that gave me more peace than mastering it ever did.