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.
