We’ve Gotta Ride the Wave We’re Given: How to Surrender Happily Rather Than Begrudgingly Into the Moment
I was planning to write this post last week but life had other plans, as we found ourselves with our four-year-old unexpectedly home for various preschool-related reasons.
We rearranged our schedules to accommodate the last-minute shifts and I ultimately had to let go of a bunch of things I was planning to focus on.
And while my ego would love to tell you that pivoting and letting go of those things was easy as pie thanks to all these years of mindfulness practice, my ego also at first shrunk me into contractive, breath-holding resistance with each unexpected and undesired wave.
We humans want what we want, and the control-loving part of us throws a little inner tantrum (thanks to these practices we can at least often largely contain the temper tantrums to the inner realm — or when they do leak into the outer realm, we can offer ourselves some regulating self-compassion afterward) when a curveball knocks those plans off course.
This is where the (world-renowned professional surfer) Kelly Slater quote I recently heard on a podcast interview with him comes in:
“You've gotta ride the wave you're given.”
At first glance, this observation might feel so cliché you gloss right over it.
But it’s hard to deny the truth in there. (Clichés are repeated so often that they become cliché for a reason, after all.) We do have to ride whatever “wave” we’re presented with from moment to moment in life, right?
And the nugget of wisdom in here tends to trend toward: So surrender into the present moment, let all clinging (to the pleasant/wanted) and resisting (the unpleasant/unwanted) dissolve, and let life's wave carry you wherever it carries you.
And while that's certainly sage guidance to point us toward a life of less suffering, we can take this to an even more enlivening and empowering place:
What if we decide to not only surrender into the wave, but also choose to trust that every wave life brings us is actually for our soul's greatest good?
What happens when we shift from feeling like we have to surrender to the wave hitting crest or trough in our current life because we've been left no other choice to connecting to embodied, heart-centered faith that life is always nudging us toward our highest good?
What happens when we soften our minds, bodies, breath, beliefs, clinging, and sense of solid identity (just) enough to be reminded that the same life force pulsing through the wave also courses through our own veins?
What happens when we surrender not begrudgingly but happily, trusting that whenever we drop out of our heads and into a deeper level of being and connection to life in the present moment life always meets us in an actually perfect way?
The more fluid, flexible, and playful we can become with how we walk through our days — and, by extension, our lives — the more likely we are to enjoy each wave that comes our way.
So what's one simple way you could loosen things up into even a tiny bit more fluidity in your life this week?
Never underestimate the cumulative power of small, intentional shifts made day after day, choice point after choice point.
Lots of Love,