I Surrender

In John Green’s young adult novel

The Fault In Our Stars,

the main character, Hazel,

says of her boyfriend:

“I fell in love the way you fall asleep:

slowly, and then all at once.”

Surrender.

The giving over of whatever –

love or sleep or loss –

we have tried mightily to control.

In my darkest hours

of which there have been

blessedly few,

I default to

my loosely Christian-y:

“Thy will be done.”

I surrender –

to whatever god or fate

or energetic force –

will take it from here.

To surrender is to give up

not in failure

rather in triumphant acceptance

of the self-deception of knowing.

You will not know.

You cannot know.

Knowing is highly overrated.

To know would be to be in control

of all the moving parts and people.

And sadly, we are not.

Loosening your grip on that

which you cannot know or control

can be painfully difficult.

In truth, some people

choose to spend their whole life

with a death grip around something

or someone that isn’t even theirs to hold.

If I’m talking to you

(and by you I mean me)

Try this:

In breath: I

Out breath: surrender

Repeat.

Release.

Surrender.

Please Get A Calendar. And Use it.

Avoiding Halsted (Hint: It’s a Metaphor!)