Control

A short philosophical treatise accompanied by Janet Jackson

Screenshot from the short film for Janet’s song "Control”, 1986.

In case you hadn’t noticed it; it’s an election year. Not just here in the US, but in the vast majority of the democratic world. Half the world, around 4 billion people,* will vote this year. And things are tense.

Even if you don’t follow political news or have superhuman control over your screentime, it’s pretty impossible to avoid at least some of the breathless, intentional-not-intentional anxiety-baiting our 24 hour news cycle pumps into the atmosphere. Pile on top of that all the other things that demand a stress response (war! Climate change! The elimination of reproductive rights!), and things can get overwhelming pretty quickly. 

So today, a short post on a positive aspect of running that’s under-discussed: control. 

I think that control gets a bad rap; it’s associated with negative behaviors like emotional repression, disordered eating, and other extremes. But, in keeping with a stoic orientation to life, control, when used as a balance point for chaos or anxiety, is an important and clever tool we can use to make ourselves feel better today and in the long run. 

Sample lyrics: “I'm in control, never gonna stop / Control, to get what I want / Control, I like to have a lot / Control, now I’m all grown up”

For me, running functions as both the expression and practice of positive control. When I’m alone in the evening, and the air is cool and the traffic is starting to die down or the restaurants are starting to fill up, I can reduce my day down to the current moment and just focus on the run. Sometimes, I don’t do this; sometimes I end up thinking about work or fighting my run or just not being into it. But most of the time, when I start with my first little hop to run, that’s the moment when I both let go of the chaos and distractions and deploy a sort of forcefield of control around myself. 

Through the run, I remind myself that ultimately, I control access to me in thought and action. I do have control over what I do with my time, the news I take in, and how I invest in myself. That’s the positive practice of control. It lets me take back part of my time and energy from the forces that seem to pull them away from me, and that’s incredibly valuable. 

Janet in control.

I wonder how many of you use running as a positive control? Let me know in the comments, and for today, remember: go run.  

*https://www.economist.com/international/2024/02/11/2024-is-a-giant-test-of-nerves-for-democracy