In my worst moments, I am convinced that my life will fall drastically short of its potential. In my best moments, I believe I am capable of surrender.
For the last decade, I’ve resisted much of life as it’s come at me — even when I could see it coming, even when I knew resistance would lead to suffering and wasn’t something I should do. I could feel my resistance to ‘normal life’ building as early as 2013, and tried to prime myself to stop it. I didn’t stand a chance; everywhere I looked, there seemed to be affirmation of my instinct to resist. That year, Ashton Kutcher won the Teen Choice Awards’ ‘Ultimate Choice’ award — a kind of lifetime achievement award in the eyes of teenagers, who I imagine saw a thirty-five-year-old post-That 70s Show Ashton as someone who had truly lived, was past his prime, and ready to be slid into the Hall of Fame of teen idols, gone but not forgotten. I was sixteen at the time. The trophy was a full-sized surfboard. His acceptance speech became my rallying call.
Maybe it was the structure of the speech, maybe I harboured an unconscious reverence for Ashton Kutcher, maybe the algorithm knew me better than I knew myself, but I stumbled across the speech on Youtube, watched it three times in a row, and have never forgotten it. He explains three lessons he learned as a teenager, but it was his third point — that the world was made by people no smarter than any of us — that made me feel seen. He said we’re told the world is the way it is, and our role is to fit inside it — but the greater truth is that we can build a life for others to live in. This spoke to my budding opposition. Rewatching it now, I see a contradiction between his third point and his first. His first — opportunity looks a lot like hard work — has this: “I’ve never had a job in my life that I was better than, I was always just lucky to have a job, and every job I had was just a stepping stone to my next job.” To me, this is a form of surrender that’s always eluded me. Even at sixteen, I thought I was better than most entry-level jobs — that my creativity and problem-solving were best used at the top, or at the start of things. Let other people figure out the gritty details, I thought; let others do the labour. It seemed, then, perfectly aligned with his third point: I believed I was capable of building a world others would like to live in, if only given the chance.
*
My losing war with resistance truly began in grade twelve. While my classmates giddily compared university offers, resentment started to grow in me — toward them, and toward the post-secondary funnel we high-achievers were being pushed through. I went along anyway, narrowing my options, pretending to know why one factor outweighed another in my decision making, growing more doubtful by the week but never doubtful enough to stop. In the end, I went to the University of Guelph for Biological Engineering (a field I’ve never worked in, five years out of the degree), I roomed with my close friend since fifth grade, and I was recruited onto the varsity swim team.
By November of my first semester, I was depressed for the first time in my life. A crippling despondency hung from me as I slogged from building to building, weighed down by two packs — one on my back for school, one on my front for swimming. My twin-sized dorm bed became my refuge. I napped most days, sometimes for hours. But I was a good student, always had been. I wouldn’t let my parents down, so I didn’t quit. I kept swimming nine times a week, I kept a full course load of calculus, physics, and chemistry.
When the semester ended, I finally confessed to my parents how I was feeling. They’d picked me up in Guelph on the way to visit my grandparents in Sarnia. Somewhere along the three-hour drive, staring out the backseat window, away from my older brother beside me, I told them I was miserable, and couldn’t handle it much longer. They were surprised, saddened, supportive. It didn’t mean much — they cared, but it didn’t matter. We were up against something too big for them to fix. In the years since, painful at times, I’ve learned they’re only human — they don’t hold all the answers.
The suffering was mostly my own doing. I resisted new friendships because everyone said I’d meet lifelong pals in university — but I already had lifelong pals, what did they know? I resisted my new swim coach because I missed my old one. I resisted romance because breaking up in first year felt cliché, so I wouldn’t let it happen. I even resisted the work, certain that first-year courses were meant to be unreasonably hard. I’d do well in them, I decided, but I wasn’t going to enjoy it.
I sought wisdom anywhere I could get it. I called my old coach, hoping he could give me a plan that would work for me. I spoke with aunts, uncles, family friends. The answers were all the same — it would get easier, these were good years, I just had to give it time. I was looking for validation for my anger — but deeper, for someone to convince me to accept.
*
Surrender for happiness — it’s so simple. The metaphors abound. When it rains, you can draw your umbrella, run for shelter, raise your collar — or you can charge into the downpour with childlike glee, jump in puddles, laugh — maybe, if you were in a movie, receive a wet kiss. More subtly: at a concert, you can stay at the back, have a fine night, or push into the pit, lose yourself in the noise and heat, let the night leave a mark on you. Then take the idea inward. On mushrooms, fighting the trip is a sure way to have a bad time. The more you try to steer, the grimmer it gets. You have to go along for the ride — let the drugs take you where they want — only as a passenger can you experience the wonder, gratitude, and connection available. That’s surrender as trust. And at the farthest, grandest reaches, there’s submission to faith. Not the small surrenders of body or mind — but the total surrender of meaning. I don’t believe in God, but when I see a video of people in worship, their hands raised, weeping tears of joy, I envy them.
By my third year, I began begging myself to let go the way people in these imaginary scenarios do — to little avail. “Just relax,” I’d plea. “The only barrier to enjoyment is yourself.” I said these things into the mirror. Mantras didn’t work. The most I achieved was committing to finishing my degree, regardless of how disillusioned I’d become. I still kept newer friends at arms’ length. I still endured my struggling relationship out of principle.
My repeated failures at surrender seemed to summon another Benny — one that existed in a parallel dimension, living a parallel life, only without anger and disappointment. All he’d done was give up on his beliefs. In return, he began receiving the things I’d imagined for myself, even if they came along the traditional path. This parallel Benny existed behind a pane of glass, in a place of blues and blacks, as though in permanent twilight. He reminded me of my younger self — me before the juvenile antagonism took hold. Even in his gloomy plane, he was always smiling, always being funny.
In the last few years, I’ve begun believing — sometimes tragically — that it’s not successful people who are content, but content people who are successful. By that I mean you must first embody your best self before you can achieve your best. If you can be at peace with yourself — aware, in tune, confident, appropriately assured — then things will start to fall into place, because you’ve allowed them to. I say ‘tragically’ because, depending on the day, this belief is a cruel impossibility — something I can only look at but never have. Or it is an aspiration, a dream that I might break through that same pane of glass and switch places with my twin. On the days when doubt beats out faith, I’m sure that I will not change — I will resist forever; it is ingrained in me, immutable. On the days that go the other way, hope trickles in at the edges. I feel a looseness in myself; I see my own good-natured character, my ability to give without needing something in return — and I think: I am not doomed. I can give in.
*
Whether give in, give up, or surrender, the connotation is defeat, loss. Really, it’s all just an exchange. In war: the exchange of a brutal struggle with an uncertain outcome for a certain outcome hopefully slightly less brutal. In argument: the exchange of being right for being at peace. In addiction: the exchange of a harmful comfort for a painful independence. Do I wish I could have a balance of both versions of myself? Sure. But I don’t know if that’s possible. Today, I’d be happy with an exchange: my overbearing analysis of and resistance to common patterns, for a life that moves along with ease, however common. In other words: my resistance for freedom. Tomorrow, though, I might go back to preferring things my way — that this world is no better than me — I can build a life that others want to be a part of.
Fighting the bad fight,
B. F. Greeno, aka
Aligning
