“Nothing is meaningful except surrendering to love. Do it.”
Rumi.
Surrendering to love… Lately, I have been learning about that. There are times when I have no control over a certain outcome. At those times, I ask myself: Are you willing to surrender to love?
What does that mean though? To grasp a better understanding of that expression, we might have to explore each word’s meaning. And then see them as a compound sentence.
What does surrendering to love mean?
Surrender is the result of joining two words: Sur and render. The first one can mean “on the basis of” while the second one refers to causing something to be. So, surrender can express a will on the basis of causing something to be.
What is that something? Love. Surrendering to love, then, is the will on the basis of causing love to be. Now, what’s love? That’s a tougher word to define, but let’s try nonetheless.
There is a lot that has been said about love, from the Greeks to modern philosophy. Because we want to make things simple, let’s settle for the dictionary and some examples.
As complex as love is, there are many entries in the dictionary. That’s why we will keep this one: Affectionate concern for the well-being of others. So, surrendering to love becomes the will on the basis of causing an affectionate concern for the well-being of others to be.
Some examples of loving
There are many ways of loving. There are also many levels of expressing love. For sure, it is not the same to love yourself, a friend, or your mother. But there is a common ground between the two: being concerned for their well-being.
Take Dan, Alicia, and their daughter as an example. They love each other, that is, they would:
- Look after each other.
- Be willing to forgive any offense.
- Say sorry when they make a mistake.
- Be vulnerable.
- Share intimacy.
- Tell each other they care for their well-being.
- Show affection.
Yet, love goes beyond that. Love is universal. Think about it. From space dust, stars form and die to create other stars like our Sun. That star produces enough energy so plants can give us oxygen and food. A complex system of living creatures is functioning because of certain events that happened a long time ago… And keep happening.
From the implosion of a star, far far away, to this very moment when you are reading this, a connection happened. A big one. Feeling part of that, feeling connected to everything else, and caring about their well-being… that’s also love.
Your family, your friends, the things you use… Everything is connected by the power of love. How does that feel? For me, it feels like a warm oppression in the chest, in the heart. Knowing that we are breathing because of cosmic events makes you wonder who we really are. The feeling may be different for you though.
Being conscious about that interconnectedness, that we are a small part of it, is what I would call surrendering to love.
Love as the highest power
I used to think surrendering was sort of a hopeless state of doing nothing. Yet I came to realize surrendering is deeper. It comes with a conscious choice to love, the choice to choose love over fear. That means trusting no matter what happens because love is bigger and wider, and the highest power.
Instead, surrendering to love is an active action, one you do every day. We get to make that choice each time because it is easy to lose our mind to daily routine or to challenges.
In other words, surrendering is not the same as giving up. Surrendering, as we have seen, is making space for love to be in our life. That’s the only way we can accept everything happening in our surroundings and act accordingly. That is, loving makes us less stubborn.
Surrendering to love, then, is like surfing the wave while rejecting it is like going against it. In the first case, a feeling of bliss will imbue you. In the second, you will feel tired and ask yourself for the meaning of it.
Conclusion…
In light of what we have discussed here, there are some wishes I want to make. May we choose love, and may love guide our missions, creations, words, brands, businesses, and homes.
Moreover, may love serve the world through our actions and our lives and communities. May we learn to value love and cultivate love including self-love as the highest priority of all.