Surrendering is tough.

Think about General Lee surrendering to General Grant at Appomattox. At the beginning of that day, April 9, 1865, Lee still planned to fight. By the end of the day, surrounded and out of options, he had surrendered.

It happens that quickly sometimes, even after years of fighting. You wake up believing it makes sense to continue the fight and by lunchtime, every avenue of winning is closed. Surrendering becomes the only way to live.

Surrender is not the same as giving up. Giving up might happen when you’re overwhelmed by circumstance or emotion, but surrendering, letting go of the fight, takes a good deal of courage and internal clarity.

It requires an unromantic comprehension of where things stand. Can your assets surpass your liabilities? How strong, determined and well-supplied is the opposition? What is the physical, emotional, financial, spiritual cost of continuing the fight? Does your decision affect the lives of others? It can feel like an impossible decision, especially when you’ve fought so long.

Surrender isn’t temporary. It isn’t a comma, or even a semi-colon, but a period. You can’t un-surrender. You can come out of retirement, but not out of surrender. Once you surrender, you can no longer fight on that battlefield or in that war. Going back on your surrender would mean no mercy and almost certain death if you were caught. Even if you won the battle or got away, you’d lose all trust.

Surrender might mean death, imprisonment or humiliation anyway. Although you surrender for your own survival and possibility of a future, the opposition writes the terms of your surrender.

Lee was granted (pun intended) terms that gave his troops Union rations and allowed them to keep their non-military weapons, horses and mules. If they promised not to continue the fight, they could begin to rebuild their lives. Stop fighting and begin anew. Not all terms of surrender are as generous and far-sighted.

Some would rather die than surrender. “Never surrender”, they say! I get it. It’s incredibly hard to stop fighting. Sometimes you might even believe your death could have more meaning than your life, sacrificing for another, for example. I think that’s rare though, don’t you? Most of us are wired to fight to stay alive.

What if surrendering is the very act that allows us to live anew?

What if the fear of humiliation or how we might look to others is a only our ego’s projection that keeps us stuck?

It is so incredibly hard to leave a cause we’ve invested in. And it’s seldom orderly. Think about the US pulling out of Afghanistan. So many have criticized the chaos of the pullout. I watched with awe. What other country surrenders and takes 100,000+ of the adversary’s citizens with it so they might have a better life. Good grief! We put our military in harm’s way to protect civilians who were not our own citizens. Say what you must about the deficiencies of the US, but remember the images of people clinging to the wings of planes to come here.

Don’t listen to ignorance. If it is time to surrender, you will know. You will know because it looks like life to you. Don’t ever be afraid to choose life.