Surrender: To give oneself up to another's power or control.
Normally, I write for a bit and then look up the definition of a word that intrigues me. But with surrender I had to do some investigation first. It is not a concept that I am intimately familiar with. This is a word that commonly implies the giving up of something completely after striving to keep it; as in, one's freedom, or one's will.
It was the topic of today's meeting. It's a really irritating topic. It implies powerlessness, the driving force behind Step One and by extension, our entire program. I don't give anything up willingly. I know when the fight's over because I'm lying on the floor trying to find my teeth. I don't get beat up a little bit -- I get whaled on. I get stomped into the dust. I'm always the guy charging up the hill with a knife in my teeth, right into withering machine gun fire.
Reminds me of the old alcoholic joke surrounding a Vince Lombardi type figure who is trying to fire up his team to go out there and win the big game: "OK, men, let's go, let's get out there and surrender!" The obvious point being that our society doesn't give us a lot of reinforcement when we try to give things up willingly. We're taught to be tough and self-sufficient, to solve our own problems, to put our efforts behind achieving whatever it is we want to achieve until we achieve it.
This is admirable, of course, until the machine gun fire becomes especially withering.
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