The Art of Giving Up

The cool kids call it 'surrender' I think. That's the thing that you do where you throw up your hands and step wantonly into the void, head and shoulders back, mouth slightly ajar, eyes mostly closed. It's very graceful, beautiful, light and potentially ethereal in quality. It's a move that smells heavily of patchouli and whispers 'take me, I'm yours' to the universe and it's whims.

But I'm talking about something a little different, a little messier. A little more human. The art of giving up is perhaps a version of 'losing it'. Maybe this giving up is what follows, or what fills the cracks of time when your waiting and staying put is not so artful. When you pretty much suck at being equanimous, or calm, or zen. This is point where you say "well universe, FUCK YOU!!" and abandon all hope of being enlightened and compassionate in favour of being grindingly, painfully and messily human. It is sometimes all about saying…or maybe just feeling and thinking…all the wrong things. The things that aren't fair, empathetic, measured, objective or accurate. The things that take you down a peg or two in the estimation of those (including yourself) who might have once perceived you as a balanced and enlightened individual.

There must be a place for this in the journey. I hope there is. Otherwise there might be no hope for me. Because while I strive to occupy that artful place of balance and patience, I can fail, more often than I'd like to admit (though not as often or blindly as I once did).

The 'art' of giving up really is a bit of a mix of Salvador Dali, Jackson Pollock and one of the "Saw" movies (haven't seen them but I'm imagining they involve a lot of dirt, blood and gristle). It's a fucking mess -  distorted, splattery, haphazard. In contrast to the cool kids version, which may or may not involve a flowing robe and silky hair blowing in the wind as we blithely release ourselves to gravity at the cliff edge, 'giving up' can be gritty, rageful, sloppy and seemingly artless. If you have an ego (which most of us do) it can feel embarrassing, even humiliating. It may inspire other people into (mistakenly) giving you advice. They can be forgiven for that ultimately, but in the moment it may just serve to feed the ragefulness…it's not like we don't KNOW we are a mess after all.

The real trick to it though, is that amidst all that blood and paint and gristle can you still love yourself? Even just for a moment. Can you practice 'radical acceptance' in the face of your own imperfect messiness? That's what I am aspiring to. Somewhere in the midst of the angst to practice a pause…just before I give in to the impulse, I will try to stop just for a moment, return to myself…then abandon all hope and barrel forward like the goat that I am.

We blunder blindly, tripping over rocks and roots as we stumble towards the cliff edge and hurl ourselves over it…jaw clenched, eyes shut tight, arms flailing. But we can forgive ourselves for it in the end because it's part of what makes us beautiful.