My Word for 2025: Surrender

I thought it was just me (but it isn’t) – Brene Brown

Nah, it’s me – Steve McCullough

Before I start, just a brief recap of the past four years and words to guide me:

2021 – Faith

2022 – Forgiveness

2023 – Gratitude

2024 – Kindness

I would consider all of them successful, at least on a certain level, the biggest shortfalls typically come when I turn them inward.  I haven’t gotten very good at forgiveness or kindness toward myself, but I still strive to get better.

In regard to surrender, this will be yet another lesson in “do as I say, not as I do”.  Well, hopefully I can

change that, and that is my goal.  I’ve spent most of my life, like a salmon, continually swimming upstream.  While I can’t complain about my life, it has really been incredible, it all could have been done so much easier.  As I continually fought the rushing currents against me, I could have just surrendered, and let the currents take me wherever they wanted.

Now, surrender isn’t giving up, surrender is just allowing what is to be.  I constantly have this mantra, that I really need to follow, do the best you can, and don’t get wrapped up in the results.  You can only do the best you can do.

It comes so much easier though when you just surrender.  Let me give you a prime example from where I learn most of what I learn – yoga.  When I just let the pose happen, it turns out so much better than when I tense up and work my ass off to get into a pose.  Just surrender, let it go, and if it happens, it happens, and if not, there’s always next time.

In all the other parts of my life, the story is the same.  I prepare and over-prepare for everything I do and pour my soul into whatever it is.  Best example lately is teaching classes.  I spend hours preparing, work weekends, try to design the perfect class.  In the end, I think for the most part, the classes go well but I can’t just accept that I did the best I could do.  I live and die based on the tests, and when my students don’t get perfect scores, or at least A’s, I go into a funk and try to figure out, where did I go wrong?

“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors – we borrow it from our children”

On a much larger scale, this issue is tormenting me greatly.  In my mind, my generation is failing at this miserably.  I believe those who came before us gifted us with a better world than the world they started with, but through our greed, our selfishness, our hatred, those who follow us won’t see a benefit. 

 
Just a few snapshots of then and now that provide some perspective of where I’m coming from:

Back in the 1950’s, Jonas Salk invented the polio vaccine, which eradicated one of the worst epidemics in modern times.  He refused to patent the vaccine, giving up substantial profit and making it accessible and affordable to the world.  When asked, why didn’t you patent it, he replied, “There is no patent. 

Could you patent the sun?”

Today, we glorify the billionaires who, for the most part, have no moral compass and would gladly capitalize on any opportunity that came their way, no matter who suffered for it.  The lack of ethics that pervades business today is astounding, and quite frankly, I don’t think we care, we’re just happy if our stock prices, and retirement plans, keep rising.

Back in the 1970’s, Roberto Clemente, one of the greatest baseball players of all-time, died in an airplane crash while on a humanitarian relief effort to Nicaragua, after a devastating earthquake there.  His highest salary in his career was $150,000 (roughly $1m today with inflation).  One of the quotes I loved from him was “Any time you have an opportunity to make a difference in this world and don’t, then you are wasting your time on Earth”. Even though he didn’t make huge amounts of money based on today’s standards, he gave back and ultimately gave his life to help others.

The current minimum salary in Major League Baseball is $740,000 and there are several players making over $40m/year.    These types of salaries are spread out over all of our sports, and for those who say they watch college sports because of this, I’ll remind you that Texas A&M is paying Jimbo Fisher $75m not to coach.  I don’t begrudge the players, but I do begrudge us for pouring so much money into sports that allows this while there are so many in the world suffering, who we bluntly don’t even give a shit about.  Give us our luxury boxes, fuck the people starving throughout the world.

Last one, and this one is very close to home.  Back in the 1970’s, when we had an energy crisis, fuel was at a shortage, and gas prices were exorbitant.  My Dad had always bought and drove huge Oldsmobile’s, but he chose to do the right thing for himself, his family and the world.  He bought a Datsun 310, manual everything.  It was a tiny car, no air conditioning, no nothing, but it got fantastic gas mileage.  He recognized what the right thing to do was.

Now, even though we have global warming and issues with climate change, we go out and buy massive trucks for huge amounts of money that get maybe 15 miles/gallon of gas.  When the topic of global warming comes up, we put our hands over our ears, and like little babies we go “la-la-la-la-la” and ignore it.  We just keep on saying “Drill baby drill!”  Who cares if there’s a planet left for our children.

The worst part about all of this to me?  We still bitch about how bad we have it.  We constantly moan about the economy, and I don’t disagree that the economy isn’t great for the younger generations, I’m really not sure how they’ll ever be able to afford homes, but I have no earthly idea how my generation complains.  A couple of generations back was labeled “The Greatest Generation” made famous in a book by Tom Brokaw.  They lived through the Great Depression and World War II, which shaped them and made them more resilient.  Maybe too many episodes of “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” shaped my generation …..

Ultimately, while I’m disappointed and embarrassed about how my generation has lived our lives, there’s nothing on a large scale that I can do about it.  There are some people who have changed the world with great efforts, such as Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, Jr., and there are some people I know like Jimmy Shafe, Dave Carr, MK Rogers and Jessica Woodside who work hard to change the world on a smaller scale.  We need people to continue to make these efforts, the world needs it.

That’s not me.  I will raise another great leader up, Mother Teresa, and as she once said, “Not all of us can do great things.  But we can do small things with great love.”  While I wish I could do more, I wish I could change the world, I will do my best to be content with the small acts I can do.  As I tell myself, I’m just a nobody.  With a purpose.  In the words of Saint Francis of Assisi, my daily goal is to “Preach the gospel at all times, and when necessary, use words.”

Do what is yours to do; don’t do what is not yours to do – Swami Rama

I recently went back and re-read Ishvara Pranidhana (Surrender) in “The Yamas & Niyamas”, and I found the quote above.  It falls in line with the Serenity Prayer, and I’ll close this blog with a beautiful and modernized version of the Serenity Prayer that Nadia Bolz-Weber posted recently. 

 

Serenity Prayer – Nadia Bolz-Weber’s version

“Dear God,

There’s so much to fear right now that I’m sort of losing track of what to worry about most.

So I’m gonna need some help focusing.

Show me what is MINE to do.

Then grant me the strength to do it, and the humility to rest knowing it is enough.

Help me remember that even if there is more to worry about in life right now, it does not mean that there is less to love in life right now.

So protect every inch of our joy, Lord.

And if you could help me stop reading shit on the internet, that might really help too.

Amen.”