Palms Together, Palms Apart
Discerning the Difference Between Surrender and Quitting
Sometimes, when one thing after another happens, and you feel like somebody is trying to tell you something, you finally throw your hands up in the air, send up the white flag and say, “No Mas! I’m done! Finished!” It’s called surrender.
It’s not quite the same as quitting. Quitting is when it just gets too hard, and you lose the will to keep at it, so, thinking you are surrendering, you throw up the white flag and walk away.
Surrender to Win
It’s not always easy to discern whether you should keep pushing through the challenge, or whether it really is a time to surrender. “Surrender to win” they like to say in the 12 Step programs. It is very true for any addict or alcoholic who has fought the good fight, trying to get some level of control on their drinking or using, then finally realize they are absolutely licked by it. Then, and only then, can they begin to pick up the tools that will serve them well in a life of recovery from addiction. These same tools are inaccessible without first, surrendering.
A Life Changing Workshop
I never really knew the difference between surrender and quitting until, about 11 years into my recovery from addiction I, along with my wife and about thirty other people, some I knew, some I didn’t, took a workshop called Abundance, followed by a workshop called More. It was in More that I learned the difference — the really hard way.
They had an exercise called “Surrender”. It was simple enough. The facilitator gave the instructions to the group of thirty, late on a Saturday night, after 5 grueling days of the workshop, everyone’s butts tired and ready to go home. “We have just one more exercise to do, then we can all go home. First, put your palms together, like this”, and he put his palms together like a slow clap. “Next, pull your palms apart, like this” and he pulled his palms apart. “Palms together, palms apart.” Everyone followed suit. “We’ll do this until we learn the lesson of surrender.”
That was it. We all began to put our hands together, hands apart, in silence, and continued. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Looking around, smiling and even laughing a little at first. Looking at the facilitator. Stone silence. After twenty minutes of this nonsense, late on a Saturday night, I’d had enough. I wanted to go home. You call this surrender? Watch this — watch me surrender. Here you go, people, follow me on this. I just stopped. I quit. I sat there in smug silence, knowing I was the first to get it. It’s surrender! Just stop. No one is going to tell you when — you have to reach that point yourself, and throw up the white flag.
Learning the Lesson Alone
No one else followed suit. They all kept putting their palms together, palms apart. I became irritated with them. Just a little at first, but eventually I was beside myself. “Come on, already! Surrender, you idiots! I wanna go home. What are you, dense? Surrender.” But, they just kept going. It was like they were in a trance, like they were meditating, completely oblivious to me, really into this whole palms together, palms apart business.
It was like they had surrendered to the exercise. That’s about when it hit me. This is now a good 45 minutes in, and I was the only one in the room who was going crazy inside. The rest of them were calmly doing the exercise, seemingly willing to go all night, if that’s what it took…for ME to surrender!
Eventually, I began doing it again, and within minutes, the facilitator spoke. “Good job, people. You all got it about 15 minutes in — it just took Pete a little longer, but he eventually got it, too.” I did, too. It’s a lesson I will never forget.
Quitting does not equal surrendering.
Sometimes, you just have to keep going, surrender yourself to the routine, or the monotony, of the moment, until it is no longer monotonous, but more like a prayer, in itself.
A Series of Injuries and Setbacks
Four years ago, I thought I was surrendering playing softball. All the signs seemed to point in that direction. One injury after another happened in those last couple years of playing.
I caught a ball wrong in the outfield, getting my throwing hand in there a split-second before the ball landed in the glove. When the ball arrived, it split the webbing between my pinky and ring fingers on my right hand right open, and sprained both fingers, requiring a bunch of stitches and wearing a splint holding the two fingers together, for six weeks.
Standing on third base after hitting a triple, the next batter scorched a screaming line drive down the third base line that caught my ankle. I went right down, hard. The next day, three of my toes were cold and purple, and my doctor feared I had compartment syndrome. I didn’t, but it was a scare. I could have lost some toes, there.
Coming back from that injury, I was standing on second base after hitting a double, with my back to the outfield. The throw coming in from center field took a weird bounce, the second baseman missed it, and it clipped me right on the back of the head. I went down hard on my right shoulder, and was out for a few weeks when I couldn’t throw the ball.
The last big injury was a broken thumb on my glove hand, which happened catching a screaming line drive down the third base line. None of these injuries had me thinking retirement, but when I got diagnosed with a brain tumor and found myself crippled with vertigo every 10 days, I was done. I took all the injuries and the vertigo as a sign from the universe, telling me to surrender. So, I did.
Reconsideration
I never looked back — until the week before last. Only then did I realize — I wasn’t done yet. I was just done for the time being. I had to focus on healing my brain tumor, which I did. I had to focus on living life, on my relationship, on work, on my recovery, on some things I had neglected when I was playing three or four nights a week. But, I wasn’t done — I hadn’t surrendered softball, forever and always. I had just quit when I needed to.
Now, I know I need to play. Palms Together, Palms Apart. Palms together…Batter Up!
