I don’t remember the exact moment, but it was a time when my life was changing, and I didn’t want it to. I seemed to sit in front of a mountain of transformation to work through, and I just couldn’t bring myself to start. It might have been only a meeting or bothersome task I was sitting at my desk for, but ultimately, it was this much deeper tension which got to me.
Thankfully, I was still stewing in some wonderful sentences from a great book, and so, by fate or by accident, I grabbed a marker and wrote “Life is surrender” on a piece of paper. Sometimes, life only begins once you let go, I realized. When you say, “Okay, I have no idea how I’ll do this, let alone get through this, but let me show up for it. Let me start, and maybe the rest will somehow wash over me like a wave, retreating back to the ocean before I even realize I’m feeling cold.”
I carried that attitude into the task, and the next one, and the next one. Now, a few months later, transformation is—as always—slowly unspooling, and my pace feels more comfortable once more.
Whenever you have the energy, do start life from a plus, not a minus. Start! Direct! Envision! But you won’t always have the energy. Yet in those moments, you can still surrender. You can accept. You can go slowly. And you can do things without wanting. That, too, is empowering. Sometimes more so than even the most impassioned speech.
The paper sign still sits on my desk. Every now and then, I glance at it. It’s okay. Change happens. Allow yourself to float in its current. Life is surrender.