Imperfect Control

Zusatztext The Boston Herald [U]nlike pop gurus who seek to lead us down a path toward some truth we may never even envision! much less attain! Viorst is content with walking alongside us! pointing out the lurking ruts and pitfalls....She makes a great buddy. Informationen zum Autor Judith Viorst is the bestselling author of SUDDENLY SIXTY, FOREVER FIFTY, NECESSARY LOSSES and several other works. She is also the author of the classic children's book ALEXANDER AND THE TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD DAY. She lives in Washington D.C. with her husband. Klappentext In this magnificent follow-up to her bestselling "Necessary Losses"! Viorst explores the need to control events! ourselves! and those around us. Leseprobe Introduction Control: The capacity to manage, master, dominate, exercise power over, regulate, influence, curb, suppress, or restrain. Control is a rich and resonant word, a word that evokes strong feelings, a word that is familiar to the tongue, for it touches on lifelong concerns with power and helplessness, with freedom and limitations, with doing and being done to, with who's on top, with whether we see ourselves as someone who goes out and gets what we want or as someone who, for the most part, takes what we get. Control is a hard-edged word; it has -- at least it seems to have -- no poetry in it. It's something we want, need, seize, fear, lose, give up. In our feelings about our place in the world, in how we define ourselves, in our personal and professional relationships, we -- consciously or unconsciously, positively or negatively -- are constantly dealing with issues of control. Do you think that control is always a negative concept? I'd like to persuade you of another view. Do you think that concerns with control do not apply to how you live or who you are? I'll argue that they apply both to me and to you. For when we can't walk one more step and yet we keep walking, when we learn something new by practicing every day, when we give ourselves over to blistering rage or to passion, when we fall off our diet and onto a crème brûlée, when we say we can't help what we do or resent what we do or deplore what we do and yet we still do it, when we force our nearest and dearest to do it our way, we are -- though perhaps we don't know it, or perhaps we call it by another name -- taking, or giving up, or abusing control. We are constantly dealing with issues of control. Control enough to shape our own fate -- or are we shaped by our genes? Control enough to master a skill, to work toward a goal, to finish what we start. Control of our sexuality. Control enough to manage on our own. Control enough to hold ourselves up to certain moral standards and to hold ourselves responsible when we fall short. Control within our marital relationships. Control within our professional relationships. Control of our adult children -- don't they need us to tell them how to live their lives? Control as something we sometimes surrender, either by choice or necessity. Control in the wake of misfortune. Control of our death. Whether or not we believe we possess it, whether we rush to embrace it or claim to shun it, most of us want some control -- sufficient control, sometimes total control -- over ourselves, and over other people, and over the events with which we're involved. Our feelings about control are expressed in our early sense of competence or powerlessness, in our power struggles during adolescence, in where and with whom and how often we make love, in how much aching regret and unfinished business we'll be dealing with when we die. Our beliefs about having control determine whether or not our small and large losses defeat us, how easily we quit, and how hard we try. Our strategies of control, when the point of control is to get our own way, include intimidation, recrimination, negotiation, the laying...

Détails du produit

• Auteurs: Viorst, Judith Viorst
• Edition: Simon & Schuster USA
• Langues: Anglais
• Format d'édition: Livre Broché
• Sortie: 15.03.1999
• EAN: 9780684848143
• ISBN: 978-0-684-84814-3
• Dimensions: 140 mm x 215 mm x 25 mm
• Catégorie: Livres de conseils > Santé > Autres