Surrender is my word this year. I am learning to surrender. I define surrender from a saying my Mom used several times when I was younger. She’d say, “Let go, let God !”. I prefer the word All or Universe in place of God, but God is the most common word most of us can easily identify with. Another definition is allowing life to be despite our pressing desires and wants to control our experiences. We are all programmed to identify our experiences as good or bad or neutral. Surrender means allowing ourself to enjoy what we have and not be too solely consumed with what we want or feel we deserve in most moments. Thinking about what we deserve is good, but I’ve learned it’s another way of not allowing and when we don’t allow, we are blocking our life flow. If we are focused on the stories in our mind and not what’s in front of us, we miss great moments. Surrendering is so hard and not easy to do. In some moments my mind is on auto pilot and playing story recall of my experiences and then there is a tug of war between the past, present moment and future thoughts. I also think surrender means not worrying about what you cannot control. We can’t control the future because it hasn’t happened yet and we can’t control the past because it’s already happened. We can control our behavior in the present moment by allowing all to be. Now, for the record, we have to live life and that means actively creating, making decisions and problem solving when we need too.
I find surrendering very hard. I have a long way to go. For now, I take a deep breath when I find myself holding on or wanting to control a moment in time that needs no control. It’s hard retraining the mind and getting it in sync with the heart and present moment.
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