Puppeteers

Every family or social group has its puppeteer. You know the one I mean. It's the one who does all the arranging and comes up with the ideas to "keep the family or group together". They aren't all bad folk, especially if the family, for example, wants to hand over the wheel to the puppeteer person. They might be tired or lazy or simply unwilling. The best part of the puppeteer, is that he or she does a lot of work to head up things. There are food lists and locations and transportations and dates and times and so on. There are all kinds of little details that the manipulator loves to use. The work eventually becomes the reward. One of the good things about such a manipulative creature is that he or she, recognises the strengths of each of its puppets. This one is good at finding places to meet. That one is perfect for the food and drink aspects. Another seems to have a gift for planning schedules at the event and still others' talents can be used to make sure that the comings and goings and accommodations are fitting. So I suppose the puppeteer is a useful individual. What I do not like, is that often the puppeteer has gained along with the gratitude of the family or group, too much power and begins to see their self-assigned role as controlling the choices that each of the family members ought to choose for themselves. It is a subtle matter. Some that I have heard of, enter too much into the life choices of their charges and approve or disapprove of not only what the member does, but also of what friends or lovers or associations that person will have. They have built their powers over others gradually, sometimes over a lifetime, making it hard for others to disagree or to launch out on their own powers because it could oust them from the comfort of the group. Others have become so immersed in the power extended over them by the puppeteer person, that they simply don't want to "rock the boat" and even make an attempt to suggest some other unique plan. The puppeteer holds the strings and most often these are invisible; to everyone but those outside the ring those who can see the subtle yanks and tugs. We outsiders can see clearly the stage set by the controller and how devious that power is, the one that has established the puppeteer as chief dictator.  Some puppeteers are those who run sects that turn someone innocent into a kind of sheep in a flock. Others in a family have for so long deferred to their manipulating puppeteer that they have given up and have lost their ability to think for themselves.  Everyone when indoctrinated, looks up to the controller for guidance in more than mere family dinners or events. That's when the arrangement is no longer something good. Fine china, for example, is appreciated for the beauty of its delicacy, the knowledge that it can be broken easily and therefore, must be coddled. The steel of the other sort, the kind run by a strong puppeteer, is binding and hopelessly, unrelentingly impossible to break. Dent, scratch, yes, but unbreakable. Sometimes, it's good to test our strings to see who pulls them, to know if we are making choices we really want or need or are we simply allowing ourselves to indulge in handing over what is ours.