It’s Friday night. You’re exhausted from a week packed with work, classes, chasing kids, not enough sleep, multitasking, or an exhausting cocktail of most of the above. You sit down with family or friends opening one of the nine streaming services you have questionable, shared access to (listen, I get it – that’s between you and Hulu and the Lord, not me). And like a streaming savant, you navigate the sea of options and swiftly select a film that everyone in the room is equally eager to watch. No one is overwhelmed by the countless choices. No one feels a pang of regret the moment the film starts, right?

Wrong. This never happens. And this never will happen. We have more access to entertainment than at any time in human history, yet somehow, we’re far less satisfied than when we’d spend half the evening driving to Blockbuster to pick out a movie, which we’d then watch twice over the weekend before having to drive back to the store to return it.

This paradox of our moment — having more choices yet feeling less satisfied — captures the essence of our struggle for control. Sociologist Hartmut Rosa explores this phenomenon in his short book The Uncontrollability of the World. The original German word unverfügbarkeit in the title is normally translated to “unpredictability,” but this failed to capture the emotional depth Rosa and his editor were aiming for. They instead landed on “uncontrollability,” a word that better captures modernity’s obsession and spiraling result of trying to make the world predictable, available, and disposable. Rosa explains his thesis:

The tremendously powerful idea that the key to a good life lies in expanding our share of the world has worked its way deep into our psychological and emotional life.

We’ve subscribed to the belief that if we can just bring more of the world within our reach and under our control, we’ll find the good life. The idea permeates every aspect of our existence, from toddlers mastering new skills to the elderly seeking security. It’s become the mantra of modern life, though it often goes unspoken: always act in a way that increases your share of the world.

But how’s that working out for us? There are apps that let us monitor our homes, control the temperature, and even see who’s at our door. But when the power goes out, all that control evaporates, leaving us more helpless than before. We’ve created a new kind of uncontrollability. Apps like Headspace, Calm, and Happify monitor our moods, but soon enough, that monitoring morphs into optimizing. Before we know it, we’re trying to control our emotions and natural body rhythms. Rosa argues that this relentless pursuit of control doesn’t lead to the good life, but rather burnout and a pervasive fear of burnout. We become numb to the world, unable to experience it in a way that resonates. As Rosa puts it, “The fundamental fear of modernity is fear of the world’s falling mute, of which burnout and depression are only timely expressions.”

This numbness bleeds into every part of life, especially parenting. Recently, the Surgeon General issued a warning about the pressures on parents today. At first, it sounded like satire — something straight out of the Onion mocking our culture’s fixation on mental health and over-therapization. I mean, where is this warning sticker supposed go — on bed sheets?? But reading the actual warning, a well of empathy begins to form. Not only are parents overwhelmed by the rising costs of childcare and the impossible maze of social media, but also the endless flood of information they’re supposed to both manage and master. Just this week, I received separate text messages about fluoride levels, radio frequencies, and forbidden foods for my own children. Behind each message was an expectation of understanding the argument and picking a side or else ending up on the wrong side of history … or worse, being labeled a bad parent. No wonder two out of five parents report feeling so overwhelmed they become numb. Our attempts to control have backfired, leaving us more anxious than before. The world is becoming cold and mute.

So where do we turn when our efforts at control have not only failed us but also created a worse form of uncontrollability?

Rosa suggests that instead of doubling down on more measuring and maximizing, we ought to instead discover resonance: a meaningful, responsive connection with the world around us. Resonance requires something outside of us calling out to us in some way. It can happen when you are compelled by a story, captured by a sunset, or moved by a song — anything that reaches out and touches you or causes abreaction. This movement leads to a form of transformation that you can’t cause or engineer. It is more than a psychological state or feeling and it can never be coerced or manipulated. Resonance is uncontrollable.

We see literal resonance in a tuning fork: when struck, the vibrations affect everything around it. Another tuning fork held up to the first will begin to respond in harmony. Or for those who ever played a sport to the point of exhaustion out of self-forgetful delight, resonance is like that “flow” state where in responding to the movement happening on the court or field, you become so immersed in the unfolding drama that you completely forget about yourself and your performance. Most players describe their peak performance in that state, but you can’t force your way in — it always just happens when it does.

Resonance finds its deepest expression in the New Testament. In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul describes Jesus as the rock that was struck in the desert to provide water for his people. Like us in the twenty-first century, the Israelites wandering the desert felt closed off from the world around them. The solution wasn’t to engineer a way out but to resonate with what God was doing by Moses striking the rock. They merely had to receive the water and be reminded of the God who was at work.

The good life is not about bringing more of the world within your grasp. Instead, it’s about being grasped by the one who gave himself for us. It’s about finding rest in the uncontrollable grace of God and being freed from the exhausting pursuit of control. In a world that demands more of our time, attention, and energy, the good life is Christ and him crucified.

What does this look like practically? It’s something like the simple children’s book The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. The child, experiencing snow for the first time, is captivated by wonder — even his own footprints in the fluffy powder draw him into a world of transformation and discovery. Like us, he tries to control and keep it, packing a snowball in his pocket for later, but it melts away while he takes a bath. The next morning, despite dreaming the snow would be gone, he wakes to a fresh covering of snow — a picture that God’s grace is not something we control but a gift that renews every morning, inviting us to resonate with what he’s up to in the world around us again and again.