Well… I tried my best to keep it a secret. But love — like pregnancy 😌— eventually becomes evident. I couldn’t hide it. And soon, everyone knew — my husband, my children, even my long-lost aunt from some forgotten continent. And of course, as with every great love affair, they all disapproved. They sighed, they judged, they rolled their eyes. “It’s not right!” My parents said, “We haven’t raised you well!”. My friends said, “It’s betrayal.. physically and mentally… we didn’t expect this of you!”

But honestly — as if! I mean, what do they know about passion that stirs your soul? A love that is hot… dark… rich… and completely impossible to resist? Because this… this is the reason I exist. The reason I wake up every morning. No alarm is louder than the thought of it, to rouse me from the deepest of slumbers, when the world is still half-asleep – that sweet anticipation, that picture in my mind… waiting… intoxicating. A love so wild that it awakens every sense, fills your chest with warmth and your mind with fireworks. And when I hold my love close… I feel the warmth seep into my hands… and at the first touch of my lips, every nerve in my body goes, “Oh yes… this is a timeless affair.”So yes. I confess… Shamelessly, I admit it. I am in a long-term relationship. With coffee. ☕❤And no, I don’t plan on breaking up anytime soon. And as I take that first sip, everything fades — the noise, the chaos, the sleep. It is just me… and my one true love. Coffee. ☕❤

Today… I’m in zen mode. Reflecting on this journey we’re on. Sharing my recent tryst with enlightenment…The Illusion of Control: Why True Peace Begins When We Stop Trying to Control Life. Control. A loaded word — powerful enough to evoke strength, fear, desire, resistance, and ego all at once. For the first 15–16 years of our existence, others controlled us. Parents, teachers, family, society — everyone decides what we should do, think, study, wear, and become. We grow up believing that adulthood will finally give us the steering wheel. And when that moment arrives, we grab it with both hands.

We feel in charge: “I’m independent. I can make my own decisions. I can shape my destiny exactly the way I want.” And so begins the long, exhausting phase of trying to control everything — our children, our families, our relationships, our image, our career, our emotions, our outcomes, our future. We convince ourselves that if we try hard enough, manage well enough, and hold on tight, life will obey. We plan endlessly because we want to stay in the driver’s seat. We spend the next 20 years attempting this. But it doesn’t work like that.

People don’t behave as we expect, plans don’t unfold as imagined, and circumstances don’t bend to our logic. The harder we grip, the more things slip through our fingers.
Yet we fail to grasp this truth … until midlife arrives. By then, we’re exhausted — too tired to keep trying. Everything feels like it’s spinning out of control. The famous midlife crisis kicks in. One day, almost suddenly, we shut it all out. We stop. We let go. And it is at this exact point in our lives that realisation hits hard… We never had control. Not then. Not now. Not ever. The “control” we believed in was only an illusion.

Strangely, once this truth sinks in, something inside us shifts… softens. The need to fight, to force, to fix everything… starts fading. We begin to release the weight we’ve been carrying for decades — the responsibility of making life “behave”.

This is the turning point — the shift from mid-life crisis to mid-life awakening. I sincerely believe that this is why many people turn towards spirituality post-45. Because they feel that transferring the burden of “control” to a higher power makes them feel light… And those who are not spiritually inclined turn inward — towards introspection, reflection, mindfulness, therapy, philosophy or self-awareness.Different paths, same destination. This is the wisdom that age brings — not from books, but from living.

We realise that life was never meant to be controlled, only experienced. People are not meant to be managed, only loved. Outcomes are not meant to be forced, only accepted. And whether one turns to God, the universe, or inward to the self, the realisation remains the same: Peace comes from surrender, not control. Because the moment we stop trying to control life, life finally begins to flow. Signing off with my husband’s evergreen WhatsApp status: “TAKE LIFE AS IT COMES.”

About the Author

Aruna

A double post-grad with an MBA and M.Com tucked safely in her backpack, she’s on a mission to carve her own corner in this competitive world, all while being the mother of two teenage tornadoes. A certified experimenter in the grand lab of life, with professional stints at SBI (one of India’s most prestigious banks) and KONE Lifts, she’s gathered a rich blend of corporate wisdom and real-world lessons.
 She finds her calm (and her voice) through writing since the time she learnt to grab a pencil, where her thoughts finally get a mic. Did we forget to mention she’s 9 3/4 with equal parts of funny and fiery? She’s also an IELTS coach who believes good grammar can save relationships and commas do, in fact, matter!