Creating The Webbd Wheel: Surrender
In which we recognize our power to choose ...
The practice of surrender is one of the most difficult disciplines I undertake. As a culture, we are actively taught to refuse to surrender, that surrender is weak and contemptible. We no longer surrender to the truth; if the truth displeases us, we bury it as deeply as we can and make up an alternative truth we force onto others.
Surrender goes hand-in-hand with power. We need not surrender to everything. In many places we have the power to create change. However, in many more places we have no power at all.
The concept of effective and appropriate surrender is meaningless unless we understand power dynamics.
To surrender is to cease resistance, or submit. To surrender can mean to lose and implies force from a more powerful authority. It’s a deceptively simple definition, because it doesn’t indicate that choice can underlie whether we surrender or resist, and choice points are tricky and often invisible. Choosing to surrender is not powerless. Being forced to do so is.
Another factor in the choice between surrender and resistance is the quality and strength of our boundaries, which also have to do with personal power management.
When faced with a choice between surrender and resistance, I look to the consequences of each choice. I’ve often surrendered to keep the peace in the context of relationship. I haven’t consciously chosen it; I find conflict so abhorrent I unconsciously submit to whatever the other person wants/needs/demands. This gives me relief in the moment, because it generally successfully avoids conflict. However, in the longer term the consequences grow more and more severe as I build up resentment and feel increasingly diminished as a woman with my own needs and preferences. Surrendering for the sake of peace ultimately disconnects me and severely damages my relationships.
Peace requiring me to be less than I am is not peace worth keeping, but I try to keep it anyway.
If we resist, we often start paying for it immediately, but we stay true to ourselves, which is empowering, even if we face dangerous or unpleasant consequences.
On the other hand, those of us with a stubborn streak may resist out of sheer buttheadedness, and that’s not always useful and may result in unnecessary consequences. This is cutting off your nose to spite your face. If we feel compelled to resist or surrender, we’re not fully in our power.
Another way to think about surrender is arguing with what is. Resisting what is in ourselves, in others, in the world, is absolutely futile and takes enormous amounts of time, energy, and other resource. We can see this everywhere today. People literally die arguing with what is. In this kind of situation, the ability to choose surrender is essential to healthy and effective functioning.
In post #27 of The Hanged Man, Mary is ashamed of her fatigue, her feeling of being drained and having nothing left to give, and her desire to be cared for. I suspect every parent and woman in the world has felt the same feeling at least once, though they might not admit it. Refusing to admit such a feeling when we experience it is arguing with what is. Our power begins to drain away from us. We stop speaking our truth. We disconnect from ourselves and others. We go into hiding.
However, if we have learned to manage our feelings we’re wise enough to know they ebb and flow like the weather and provide us with important information about our current needs and health rather than being a matter of shame. We can choose to surrender and respond to our feelings rather than resist and deny them.
If surrender is too heavy and makes our lives more complicated and difficult, especially in the long term, perhaps we need to make another choice.
If resistance is ineffective, not productive of healthy change, and makes our lives more complicated and difficult, perhaps we need to make another choice.
If either resistance or surrender diminish our personal power and/or undermine our connection with ourselves, we need to examine our situation more carefully.
Denial is not power. Acceptance of the things we cannot change is power. Intentional resistance can be an extremely powerful tool to help us create change within our power, such as social injustice.
It’s a big, complex world. Every day we make choices between resistance and surrender and experience the consequences. None of us have the power to fix the problems in the world, but change happens in small increments, one person at a time, one choice at a time. We can surrender to the way things are as we resist choices that maintain or worsen the status quo.
Surrender starts within us. If we feel worn out or unhappy we can surrender to that feeling, embrace it, turn toward it, respond to it, rather than hiding it and denying it. We begin to discover who we are if we surrender to our needs and feel our feelings. If we can’t navigate the choice between surrender and resistance internally, we’ll struggle to do so externally as we interact with the world and those around us.
(This essay was published with post #27 of The Hanged Man.)