Surrender. That’s been my word this year.
It hasn’t always been easy to sit back -- and see where things go. There are lists, goals, ideas, daydreaming to do, of course. And it’s not to say that those things haven’t occurred. They have. But I’ve also tried to shift my thinking a little.
“What if I just didn’t do anything? What if I just sat wherever I was and took it all in? What if I just waited, deeply knowing whatever I needed would come?”
It takes a tremendous amount of trust to learn to be still. To trust that life will take you where you need to be. That you will be supported. But that’s what I’ve been practicing this year, and admittedly, it’s been heartwarmingly restorative.
The irony is that it’s taken actual physical experiences -- where I am literally forced to surrender -- to really start to see the joy that comes from it.
You see I float now.
I float even when I’m not technically “floating.” Because that’s what happens when you get a taste of what it’s like to surrender. You dip your head back in the water, exhale slowly, release, and you let the water take you where it wants to go.
(It’s only taken eights months of practice for those counting.)
What surprised me first was actually floating in a richly salt-watered pod with healing, green-colored lights and Tibetan chanting.
If you’ve ever actually “floated,” then you know in this shallow bed of water it takes some time to ease in and relax. But I dropped right in and went straight into the deepest state of relaxation I could remember, and floated, for an entire hour.
It was my two favorite things combined: a relaxed meditation and water. Why don’t I do this all the time?
The next came a few weeks later on a beautiful lake in West Virginia.
I can safely admit that I am not someone who considers herself to be a so-called “lake person.” But on this lake, in this inflatable, bright-yellow kayak, with my adventurous friend, I once again played with this idea of surrendering.
We paddled, and paddled, and almost sank, and paddled to the middle of this serene lake surrounded by these gorgeous mountain vistas. And we stopped, and we hung out, and we let the force of the current take us wherever.
We could feel the current rippling beneath us. Bump. Bump. Bump. Bump. And then it would quiet, and stop.
It seems obvious, I know, but I was looking for proof in some small way that if we just chose not to go in a direction -- and of course, sometimes we did -- but when we didn’t, the current would carry us along. We’d go somewhere else. We’d be in a new spot. And we could then decide whether we wanted to stay or go, or point our kayak in a different direction. But we could also sit back and enjoy it, too. Let the kayak and the lake support us without any of our effort.
There was something very special about that.
So, maybe the next time you don’t know what to do or where to go, just float.
Let the water carry you. Because, maybe just maybe, in time you’ll eventually get there.
