The Fine Art of Surrender

So, what does surrender have to do with politics and current affairs, you might ask? Everything! One of the most basic lessons Machiavelli tried to teach was that political power extends to the rulers from the people, not the other way around. Though even today it is quite common to hear commentators and politicians refer to some dictator or other’s rule as being "imposed" on their people.

It might help to remember that the Bolshevik revolution required the Russian people’s support. Communism was quite popular in the first part of the twentieth century. So was fascism; there were socialist and fascist political movements all across Europe. Even now many European countries have a functional socialist political party.

Now, obviously the socialist revolution in Russia didn’t pan out the way the Russian people had hoped. Even before the war ended the tyranny began, but by that time it was too late. While there was still a large segment of the population that supported the communist movement, for even more, the reality of the "worker’s government" was already not living up to the ideology. Most felt nothing could be done. Complicity took over, and was quickly followed by resignation, which lasted for almost seventy years. Then, the Russian people, supported by many of the Soviet Union’s satellites, said enough!

Which leads us back to surrender. All too often surrender is confused with resignation. And indeed, the two can look very similar. Each is a choice. The latter is the choice of the victim; the former the choice of the empowered individual. The latter is attached to everything to which the individual is resigned; the former is unattached and centered on what is happening now.

The Buddha concluded that all human suffering was the result of desire — attachments to things outside ourselves. Things that we believe are "beyond our control". Jesus was driving to the same point when he said "Not my will, but Thy will be done." The Sufi Muslim’s speak of the "battle of the nafs," the battle of the ego and it’s attachment to things outside of ourselves.

The resigned individual believes things are happening to him. This is the Soviet citizen who believes himself to be powerless to change the big and powerful Soviet government. He lives in constant fear. Fear of doing something wrong that will get him turned in, fear of the KGB showing up on his door, fear that the Government will come and take one of his children for some special program.

The individual who has surrendered, however, is no victim. She may or may not toe the Soviet line. If she does, it is because she has chosen to surrender those powers to the State. And that’s the way it is. If not, she will have surrendered her life to the cause of revolution, fully realizing it may not be achieved in her lifetime, and that it may well cost her her life. So be it. Her life, long or short, will be rich and full; there will be no regrets.

Let this be a reminder to all of us, citizen, elected official, or government employee. We need not be resigned to the political status quo. We need not fear reprisal from some political authority. We have a choice: We can be who we know, deep inside ourselves, that we were meant to be. We can surrender to it, do what we know must be done, and remain true to ourselves. And by so doing live a rich, empowered life that will end with no regrets. Or we can toe the party line, resigned in our belief that "there’s only so much we can do".

The choice, as always, is ours. But it leads inexorably to the final point about surrender. Real surrender is always, always ultimately something we do to ourselves. We surrender self to Self. Anything else is resignation.

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