WHAT YOU SEE IS NOT WHAT YOU GETown, his apartment became as messy as his room at home, junk
and clothes everywhere.
For a brief period he shared his apartment, and his life, with
a young woman, but it didn't last. "I can't live like that. I'm not
that neat, but to just drop everything everywhere and wonder
where it is when you want it! And meals. I plan dinner at seven
and at six you're hungry so you fill up on junk food!"
Gavin shrugged. "Why not eat when you're hungry? I'm hungry
at six. Why wait till seven?"
"Because I go to a lot of trouble to prepare dinner at seven!
Can't you control your hunger?"
Obviously Gavin couldn't, and finally his girlfriend moved out.
He was upset, but not enough to change. "Why do I have to be
uptight about everything? It's not my life-style!"
But his life-style spilled over into his work. He started a good
job with an outfit making documentaries for cable television, but
he could no more control his work than he could control his life.
He misplaced important documents, neglected dull projects, failed
to change scripts, and eventually lost his job.
It's difficult, he discovered, to be controlled on one level while
you're out of control on another. To be effective, control must be
exhibited in most areas of your life.
Sometimes we find a deceptive charm about uncontrolled people.
The subtext they send out is romantic, above commonplace de-
mands, even primitive and natural, but they are difficult to live
with and next to impossible to work with—or, worse still, to work
for!
Few people are controlled in every area, but most people use
degrees of control to send out a subtext of sensibility and order.
The ones who can't or won't are the gamblers who never resist a