Surrender

I fear I could write a lot about this and still not be clear. Clarity counts so perhaps I will start by saying what surrender is not. Surrender as I am using it here is not about giving up. In some ways it is the opposite of giving up.

Surrender as I use it here is directly related to Personal Mastery and recognizes that few things are actually in our control. We can be strategic, we can be mindful, and we can be aware but control is largely illusion.

I am very fond of a John Hiatt song “Through These Hands”. (I prefer the version covered by Don Henley on the “Michael” soundtrack). One part of the chorus goes:

Do not ask what you are not doing
For with your voice you cannot command
But in time you will move mountains
and it will come through your hands

To me these words embody surrender to the work that is in front of you. Work is always required and it is always there, personal work, group work, not job, but work. You cannot make the world the way you want it by commanding, but if you do the work that is yours to do creating the life you desire isl possible.

These lines also suggest what 12 Step people know, sanity requires surrender to something greater than yourself. People approach this in many different ways, some to turn their lives over to religion, many others to love but a notion of something larger seems required. Me, I surrender to the vast unknowable energies of the universe.

Surrendering to something larger eliminates my need to take on the unmanageable responsibility of controlling all outcomes. Like many of us I have a strong need to feel that I am in control, and that being in control is what matters most. I have learned from doing the work required to keep my sanity that control is the path to madness. We cannot command and we cannot control. These are tough lessons that can destroy us if we do not learn them well.

In this sometimes counterintuitive universe in which we live it is the “letting go” rather than the “holding on” that gets us what we need and gets us where we want to go.

Surrender is hard, and I have to keep remembering to do it. So for me surrender is not about giving up, but it is about letting go and it is about remembering the value in it.