The Art of Surrender
The art of living is much like learning how to swim.
P.S: Most of you loved this previous entry on How To Deal With Toxic People.
"Understand at last that you have something in you more powerful and divine than what causes the bodily passions and pulls you like a mere puppet." — Marcus Aurelius
The art of living is much like learning how to swim. At first, you recoil from this strange experience. Your body panics at the physiological response. The moment you're no longer breathing the same, or imagine the depth and expanse of the water you're in as replete with dangers ripe for your demise, or your footing slips, instinct kicks in and your muscles tense. It's not just fear of drowning. It's fear of the unknown—of letting go, of trusting forces outside your ego to hold you up. You imagine everything that could go wrong. You anticipate the fall before it happens. You panic. So you grip at the edge. But sometimes the edge is nowhere near you, so you choke on an unhealthy amount of water. So you swear to stay in the shallow end. You live small, always feeling weak, always anxious about your powerlessness—in the gripes of the fear of the worst that could happen to you.
But with knowledge and practice, you understand something else. You learn to trust the buoyancy of your lungs to keep you afloat, the fidelity of your breath to keep you alive, the ability of your vision to orient you. You begin to trust that nature, when met with wisdom, composure, a mastery of the fundamentals and presence—often returns the favor. Life usually turns out better than you think. And you start to apply that same stability to the rest of your life. You begin to rely on your rational nature—to help you find strength, even an absurd joy like Camus’ Sisyphus, in suffering. To look after other people and find fulfillment in the act. To do your job and awe at your dexterity. To act with confidence despite uncertainty by choosing to influence what you can, to love everything that happens, to endure the rest without complaint. You begin to realize that Stoicism isn't about gritting your teeth or suppressing your emotions—it's about training your perception to align with nature, your incentive being the opportunity to practice virtue whenever adversity or temptation appears. It’s as Viktor Frankl, the holocaust survivor, put it,
“The question of the meaning of life is not asked in the right way, if asked in the way it is generally asked: it is not we who are permitted to ask about the meaning of life — it is life that asks the questions, directs questions at us… We are the ones who must answer, must give answers to the constant, hourly question of life…With this mental standpoint nothing can scare us anymore, no future, no apparent lack of a future. Because now the present is everything as it holds the eternally new question of life for us.”
And when you begin to trust this philosophy as you did what was within your body's power when learning how to swim, you conquer the fear of things like death, poverty, obscurity, insults, embarrassment, rejection, exhaustion, rude people, heartbreak, anxiety, depression, or failure. You stop indulging in extreme pleasures just to avoid reality. You remember that none of the onslaughts or inconveniences of life have the power to harm you, none of the bad habits have power over you, because you know virtue is the highest good—unless you respond to the events with poor character. Unless you sulk, complain, and forget the greatness of your soul. The Stoics were not offering idyllic metaphors—they were handing you a method. And if you practice it, you begin to feel something rare in this world: lasting peace, power and joy built from a well-tested lucidity.
Eventually, you stop seeking control where it's none of your business. You no longer demand certainty from the world. You let events unfold however they must. And you meet them, confidently, knowing you'll accommodate yourself to the physics of their molecular spatial orientation. Epictetus ends the entry with these poignant words,
"Don't seek to have events happen as you wish, but wish them to happen as they do happen, and all will be well with you."
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This essay made me exhale like I’ve been holding my breath for twenty years—because maybe I have.
The swimming metaphor hit deep. The panic of not knowing, the muscle memory of control, the slow trust in the water’s support—it’s all so vividly true to how surrender feels when you’ve spent your life gripping the edge of certainty.
And that Frankl quote? A spiritual mic drop. Life’s not your customer service rep—it’s the interviewer. And your answer is your character.
Thank you for this. For reminding me that virtue isn't in the outcome—it's in how we float when the storm hits.
Acceptance