Giving up control

This blog is not about our family weddings, but something deeper. Some recent weddings have taught me much - about myself and about our culture. I’m taking a bit of a risk by sharing some family stories, but let me reassure my family at the outset: my intention is not to embarrass anyone or to air our dirty laundry in public but use these events to reflect on the culture around us. 

The question I’ve been grappling with, after attending a few family weddings over the past three years, is this: Why do fathers seem to have a harder time than mothers in letting their daughters go? Or is this just my perspective as a man - that we struggle more? One thing I’ve realised is that men often have a harder time giving up control than women do. We are - broadly generalising here - control freaks.

These days, I find myself advising men my age or younger, (mostly baby boomers) who have daughters yet to be married, to watch the movie Father of the Bride. I watched it before my daughter’s wedding, and through conversations since then, a few things have become clearer. 

There’s been a cultural shift from “we” to “me.” Weddings are no longer “our” weddings (as in family events), but “my” or “our” (meaning the bride and groom’s) weddings—where the family now plays a supporting role. It’s a move from the broad, inclusive “ours” to a more personalised “ours.” And fathers often struggle with this shift. It’s no longer primarily a community celebration but a couple-driven event - complete with themes, colour codes, excel sheets, event managers, presentation and social media posts. 

This change is especially hard for a man who has been “in control” of his family - or thought he was. It’s a tough transition: from leading to letting go. But in another sense, it’s freeing. All you really need to do is rest, relax, and pay the bills! And yet - I must confess - I still prefer control to freedom. 😊

So, here’s the deeper question: When did this shift from “us” to “I,” from “ours” to “ours,” happen?

Jonathan Sacks, in his book Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times, explores this question. He writes: “How did it happen, this move from ‘We’ to ‘I,’ from society to self, from ‘out there’ to ‘in here’? Some date it to the Hebrew Bible, with its statement that every human being is made in the image and likeness of God. Others trace it to the great Greek philosophers like Socrates, or to the Stoics.” He also quotes Larry Siedentop, who makes a compelling case for Christianity as having liberated the individual from the sometimes suffocating embrace of the family. (I don't agree but :))

Sacks continues: “The revolutionary shift from ‘We’ to ‘I’ means that everything that once consecrated the moral bonds binding us to one another - faith, creed, culture, custom, and convention - no longer does so. The energy now localised in the ‘I’ has been diverted from family, congregation, and community, all of which have now grown weak, leaving us vulnerable and alone.”

Sherry Turkle, in Alone Together, adds: “An individualistic universe may be free, but it is fraught with loneliness, isolation, vulnerability, and nihilism—a prevailing sense of the ultimate meaninglessness of life.”

And Sacks concludes the section by saying: “That is the price of radical individualism, massively accelerated by smartphones, social media, and the loss of contexts in which we form enduring moral commitments. Everything has become immediate, transactional, and presentational. We hide behind our profiles and become the masks we wear.”

And so, the result is - we now face what’s being called a “Loneliness Epidemic.” See the data below from a recent WHO report which is self explanatory. 

Loneliness by age 

Understanding culture change, is the answer to go back the senior generation’s way - where parents found a boy or girl, announced, to the boomer generation - “We’ve decided on your marriage,” and added, “We’ve also booked your tickets. Just buy your dress and show up”? Or some modified version of that? 

Is the answer to take back control and create forced communities? So that Loneliness can be prevented? 

Or maybe, as Schopenhauer suggests, we need to learn to live like porcupines. In summer, when they come too close, they injure each other with their spines. Perhaps we should give up control and celebrate individuality - especially in times of warmth and self-sufficiency.  But in winter, when porcupines stay too far apart, they freeze. We must stay near and available in times of cold and need. Finding that balance isn’t easy—especially for fathers, who as I shared above, tend to be control freaks.

But reality is as Jonathan Sacks says: “But we cannot stay as we are, for the human world is growing colder and the winds more biting and ferocious. We need a little more ‘We’ and a little less ‘I’ if we are to negotiate some of the challenges the present century still has in store for us.”

But the challenge is to be "we" without taking control. Because that is what we were told in the Good Book -  "The goal is for all of them to become one heart and mind...So they might be one heart and mind with us."

But it starts with me - giving up control of my perceptions! 

I am not advocating seeing "Father of the Bride 2"  😀...