Tis the Season to Surrender

The heat has arrived early this year, and with it, everything feels a little more intense. Tempers, headlines, uncertainty. Another conflict is brewing in the background – same story, new location; and like most wars, it feels like something that begins loudly and ends… who knows when, or how. The markets wobble, resources feel finite, and the world appears increasingly difficult to make sense of.

And yet - what can we do but continue?

There are moments when my worries feel personal and immediate. Tomorrow, I may not be able to cook. Or drive. Or sustain the life I’ve carefully built. But almost instantly, another voice interrupts:The world isn’t about you. Look at the bigger picture. It's a voice I’ve heard often. From people who love me, from people who mean well. And they’re not wrong! There is perspective in recognising privilege. There is grounding in zooming out. While differing perspectives justify almost everything, there’s also something unsettling about how quickly the world normalises everything - fear becomes opportunity, instability becomes strategy.

Oil markets dip? Invest.

People feel unsafe? Monetise security

.Leadership fails? Influence, manipulate, fill the gap.

It’s dizzying, this world of competing agendas, ego battles, and quiet power plays dressed up as necessity. And somewhere in the middle of it all, you begin to wonder - what exactly are we holding on to so tightly? Even in the smaller, more personal corners of life, this lack of control consistently shows up.

My Bhattkarin (Konkani word for female house owner) , someone I’ve shared an easy, respectful relationship with for nearly two years, suddenly decided I was scheming. It came out of nowhere. Or maybe it didn’t. Maybe it came from something internal, something unspoken, something I will never fully understand. And, this drove home the idea of how little I can actually control.

So I've decided to take it a day at a time.

I pack up when it’s time to leave.

I rest only when I really need to.

I love as fully as I can.

I do my best, and carry, very subtly, a hope that things will work out.

I’m learning to ride the tide. If it pulls me under, I’ll go with it. If it pushes me ashore, I’ll gather myself and step back in. There’s a quiet anxiety in the fact that life may not look anything like I imagine, but it coexists with an excitement for what comes next,

I can hope for the best, and still be ready for something entirely different. Because when you stop defining exactly what the outcome must be, something interesting happens: everything becomes an outcome. Every experience, in its own way, lands somewhere meaningful.

This surrender isn’t giving up. It’s giving in; to the uncertainty, to the impermanence, to the sheer unpredictability of being alive. There are millions of lives unfolding alongside mine, each one carrying its own weight, its own urgency. While I matter deeply to myself, so does everyone else, to themselves.

There’s a sadness for those who don’t get that chance. For those whose lives are defined by conflict, by limitation, by forces far beyond their control. It puts things into perspective, but it doesn’t erase the complexity of our own inner worlds either.

Life isn’t always great. But it’s worth a shot.

Particularly so if you're ready to ‘Surrender’