The Art of Giving Up Control
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The Art of Giving Up Control

Updated: Dec 31, 2020

The Pearls of Wisdom Diaries: Chapter Three ( Part Two )


Varsha Vadiraj


Micromanaging your life and trying to force your way through things that are just not working out can make you feel drained. Instead, why not surrender to the situation and accept the circumstances? There are things we can control and there are things, we can’t.

No one anticipated the COVID-19, yet here we all, house-arrested for God knows how long. Could we have controlled the situation? Maybe as an entire race, if we had been careful enough, it never would have happened but now that it has, we all feel helpless and stuck. You can’t change the situation but you can simply accept the situation for what it is and know that it won’t last.


All of this sounds good to hear I know but it also gives rise to a few more questions. If we just go with the flow and surrender everything to destiny, what’s the point of having dreams and goals then? Why do desires even exist? You have to work towards your goals and dreams, no one’s asking you not to. I am of the opinion, that if you start your first job at 25 and not 22 as you’d planned, it’s still OK. If you get married at 35 and not 23, it's still fine. If you get a house at 40 and not at 30, you have still done well for yourself. If you never get around to buying a house, even though you dreamt of it, it's still OK. Having dreams, desires, feelings, emotions are all part of being human. Without them, life would be mundane and we would have absolutely nothing to work towards and work for. My point is if we are not able to fulfill a desire no matter how hard we try, maybe it's not really meant for us. Maybe there’s something else. A true story of a young mother particularly intrigued me. This young lady had always desired a child and when she finally gave birth to a baby girl, she was absolutely overjoyed. Days passed, and it turned out that her daughter was autistic. As a mother, the lady tried to do everything to make her child learn faster, to try and treat her like every other child her age and keep her at pace. Yet soon enough, the mother came to the realization that what she was expecting from her young daughter was simply unrealistic. Her daughter was just who she was — a bright, happy and beautiful young child who was definitely making progress but at her own speed. Just accepting this very fact made the young mother feel at peace. She let go of the idea in her head and accepted and loved her child for she was. This made her feel liberated and relieved for there was truly no need to worry.


Surrendering often has a pretty negative connotation but ideally, it shouldn’t. Giving up is not necessarily bad. The key here is, knowing when to give up and when not to. When we try to control a situation that we are clearly not in control of, things can really go haywire. Instead, if we accept the situation, control our reaction to it and trust that what we are facing was meant to be a part of our life, we can truly feel at peace.



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