Now that you have arrived here,
Breathe in deeply and let it all go.
One more time,
Inhale,
Exhale.
Welcome to a hit of hope.
And fair warning,
This one is salty.
I often wish there was something I could do to make life easier.
I don't think I'm alone in this,
Which could be why we are so susceptible to the siren calls of life hacks and magical thinking.
If I could just do this,
Then all will be well.
Inhale,
Exhale.
Our culture is full of stories like that,
That feed this kind of wishful thinking.
Take the idea of surrender.
Again and again,
I hear stories of people who spent their lives striving for what they wanted,
Working and pushing to the point of exhaustion.
Life simply would not go the way they wanted it to.
And then they had an epiphany.
They decided,
I will surrender and let it all go.
And poof,
They suddenly succeed beyond their wildest dreams.
Inhale,
Exhale.
I suppose I pay attention to these stories because this is often how I live.
I strive and I push,
And if it worked for them,
It should work for me,
Right?
So I devoutly say,
I surrender and wait for the heavens to open and grant me unending showers of love and money and power.
You can guess how this story goes.
Nothing changes and my ass starts to chew gum because it worked for all those others.
So why in the hell isn't it working for me?
Inhale,
Exhale.
Of course it isn't working because what I am really doing is trying to make the act of surrendering into an abra cadabra.
I imagine that my act of saying,
I surrender,
Will poof my life into perfection.
Actually,
It's worse than that.
What I am doing is playing at surrendering,
Using surrendering as a political act.
When I say,
I surrender,
It is just a back room politicking with all kinds of fake smiles and pretty promises to the universe,
Just so I can get what I want.
Inhale,
Exhale.
That is so hard to admit.
But maybe I'm not alone.
Maybe you do this too.
And if so,
Maybe we can do the work together of seeing surrendering not as a life hack,
But as a lifestyle.
To surrender is not a means to an end.
It is not some Machiavellian power move.
It is a choice,
A pattern of reactions and behaviors.
It is the way one lives,
The way one chooses to live,
Not for the ends,
The result,
But because it is the best means,
The best way of living day to day.
To surrender,
To really surrender is not to get what you want.
To surrender is to live and act and do and flow and yield and release and be present,
So fully present to what is,
That it fucking electrifies every single particle of your life.
Inhale,
Exhale.
To surrender is to live with abandon.
And in that sense,
To surrender is scary as hell because it is to live wild,
Ready to risk in order to be open to what happens,
Not control what happens.
To surrender is to set you and your life free,
Free from trying to control it,
Free from expectation.
To surrender is to let life be,
To let the universe break you wide open so you can live into this full and surprising sense of yes,
That helps you live light and shine.
