On Reading: Don’t Cry For Me – The Cost of Control

I. This Isn’t Just a Story About Failure

I recently read Don’t Cry for Me by Daniel Black, a story about a dying father, Jacob, who writes letters to his son in an effort to explain his life and the decisions he made as a parent.

It’s a story of failure, but what stuck with me is what drove it. A rigid framework of masculinity, shaped by fear, that required control. A life built on a belief system that couldn’t bend. And in the process of trying to survive within it, he slowly strips away everything that gives his life meaning.

I know the draw of control. I see it in myself. I often say, “I can’t control the world around me, but I can control myself.” It’s a thought that’s helped me survive. But as I reflect, I realize it may also be the thing that’s kept me from thriving.

As I read Don’t Cry for Me, more than anything else, I saw the cost of that mindset clearly. Because when you don’t have control over your life, you try to create it. And that’s where things start to break.

Maybe the framework needs an update.

II. Failure Doesn’t Happen All at Once

We often think of failure as the culmination of a moment, the final outcome or the inflection point right before. But as Jacob reflects on his life, you see it accumulate. Not singular explosive moments. Those come later, after the erosion that lays the foundation.

We see him lose his family, his connection, and eventually even his identity.

It’s a slow progression fueled by pride and fear.

That slow build allowed him to justify every bad decision, never having to reflect in real time. It made inaction more comfortable, which led to isolation and regret. And as he grasped harder for control, believing he needed it to survive, it made him blind to the failure unfolding in his life.

III. When You Can’t Control Your World, You Try to Control Your People

We try to combat fear and satisfy pride with control.

We see Jacob struggle with a lack of control in the world. A curse passed down to Black Americans for generations. In his second note to his son, he writes:

“I was born a slave, Isaac – almost literally… Even after freedom, we were not free… We never believed we meant much.”

Being Black in America often comes with real constraints. On your environment. On how you’re perceived. And, if you allow it, on your self-belief. 

And with that lack of control in the broader world, you look to manufacture it somewhere else. In your home. In your relationships. In yourself. It becomes the most accessible form of stability.

To build that stability, you lean on what you know. For Jacob, that’s masculinity. The version he learned from his grandfather and the men around him. A version of masculinity built on dominance, authority, and superiority.

You still see that framework today. Different language, same pillars. It’s framed as self-control and identity, but none of it is internal. It requires someone or something to exert control over.

That control, driven by fear, turns the people in our lives, especially women and children, into accessories rather than people. It has us prioritize societal expectations over our own happiness because the foundation we’re building on is external.

And the internal pieces, reflection, empathy, courage, don’t come until much later. Too late to have their greatest impact. 

IV. That Control Is Coming From Fear

So why do the internal pieces come too late? Because the control that’s sought is driven by fear. The same fear fuels the failure. Control becomes a substitute for safety. It creates the feeling of stability. Until it doesn’t.

Because what you’re building isn’t strength, it’s desperation.

And desperation builds a weak foundation. As you try to gain more authority in your relationships, assert more dominance, and stay superior, erosion takes place. Trust, connection, and honesty all begin to whittle away.

We see it in Don’t Cry for Me as it moves from Jacob’s grandfather, to him, to Isaac. The connection weakens. In key moments, they stay quiet because honesty feels too costly. The fear spreads.

We grasp harder for control, become more reactive, and do more damage. And eventually, everything crumbles, even ourselves, the one thing we thought we could always control. There’s no identity left because it was tied to that small sense of external control.

We see Jacob fall into depression as his family falls away. They were the last thing he knew of himself. Only then does he begin to see the possibility of being someone new.

He finds courage with nothing left to lose. It leads him to read, to confront the fear of knowledge that had kept him locked in his beliefs. And with that comes reflection, empathy, and the search for a new identity.

V. What’s Missing Is Courage

The repair and willingness to search for a new identity requires what was missing from the original framework: courage.

It makes sense why it’s overlooked. The dominant version of masculinity hasn’t evolved with the world around it. It still reaches for control to meet its baser needs.

But control avoids change. Courage forces it.

Courage is what allows you to say the things you’ve been avoiding. To confront yourself before everything breaks. To choose something different while it still matters.

Without it, you default to control. You avoid vulnerability. You avoid the conversations that would keep your relationships alive.

What’s required instead are different skills. The ability to lead without fear, manipulation, or domination. To find value outside of what you produce. To ask for help.

That’s what allows you to move from survival to actually living.

VI. Survival Isn’t the Same as Living

Jacob found the courage to change too late. He hit rock bottom. There was nothing left to lose.

And survival, the only model he knew, wasn’t enough. It was a model rooted in fear. One built from the threat of being lynched, degraded, or humiliated. A model that required suppression and control. And it left him stuck in it.

He needed a different vision of what was possible. One that could move him from survival to living. A model that required self-acceptance, risk, vulnerability, and room for failure.

But that shift didn’t come until it no longer cost him anything.

Empathy comes late. Reflection is delayed until the end, when there’s nothing left to control or protect. By then, the consequences are already set.

It’s not transformation. It’s self-reconciliation.

I don’t want to get to the end and start reconciling with myself. I don’t want to still be searching for transformation. I want to do that throughout my life.

I see where I’ve settled into a comfortable version of survival. And I see where I’ve had the courage to push past it. It’s not something you fix all at once.

Because restraint can look like wisdom, but often it’s fear with good posture.

And if you let that fear shape your life long enough, you don’t avoid the cost. You just understand it too late.