The Difference Between Surrender and Submission

Yesterday I made the decision to revisit, with the intention of finally publishing, a novel I wrote about 10 years ago. Before I commit to publishing, I want to revise and edit it as to inject the version of who I am today onto the pages.

Much to my surprise, I found it to be a fun read, and having the opportunity to edit it was a bonus. Adding to the list of unexpected outcomes, I equally didn’t expect a flood of emotions overwhelming my psyche 12 hours later. The string of successes and failures I’ve encountered over the last decade must have been subconsciously aroused and I woke this morning having to fight through a barrage of self defeat. All that I have worked so hard to overcome and put behind me turned out to be as relevant and present as ever. I had no idea how I was going to shake the funk and forge through the rest of the process which lay ahead.

About an hour into the power struggle between self worth and self defeat I finally said to myself “I surrender.” Yet the surrender was in no way submission, an important designation. I had simply determined to accept my thoughts, but I was not submitting to them, which would give them control. I was accepting them and letting them be what they are going to be and represent what they are to represent in my life.

This act of surrender is by no means forfeiture of the positivity in my life. It’s an acceptance of the balance which negative and positive represent in my life. As I’ve stated one hundred times over, one cannot know positive without negative, success without failure, and all that lies in between. Apparently, I never reconciled the negative and let it be what it would be. I intentionally buried it in my garden of thoughts and by ignoring it, I let it spawn the greatest overgrowth of weeds.

Apparently, rereading my story forced me to open my eyes, look back, and observe my garden of thoughts. For so long I have simply closed my eyes and sowed new seeds, with no desire to look back, hoping my new thoughts would take root and outgrow the weeds. I am now forced with accepting that weeds are part of every garden and must be tended. I must surrender to their existence. However, I cannot allow them to choke off the rest of what I’ve planted, I cannot submit to them and let them reign over me. So, I must go back and pluck them so I can see how much my garden has grown and admire its beauty. Only then will I see the renewed beauty of my thoughts, how they’ve grown and taken shape.

This whole experience made me think deeper about the Garden of Eden and the possibility that it is actually a story of the mind – positive, negative, good vs evil, and the struggle every human faces within their own mind. In the end, I am coming to realize that there is beauty in our lives we will never notice if we do not take the time to look back and tend to our garden.