Giving Up Feels Like Failure. Surrender Feels Like Freedom.

By: Stuart Knight (Founder and CEO) | April 1, 2026

One of my favourite movie scenes of all time takes place during the second half of the film Forrest Gump.  If you haven’t seen that movie, allow me to set the scene.  After returning from the Vietnam War, a guy named Sergeant Dan finds himself on a boat in the middle of a raging storm with the main character Forrest (Tom Hanks).  After losing both legs in the war, Sergeant Dan is understandably pissed off at the world, to the point where he no longer cares if he lives or dies.  Ironically, he holds Forrest responsible for "not leaving him behind to die that day".  In this scene, Dan has climbed the mast of the fishing boat caught out at sea facing hurricane winds and blinding rain, and instead of being terrified, he yells to the sky, “You call this a storm?!  Come on!  Is this all you’ve got?!”

I remember laughing very hard at that line, while simultaneously feeling energized at the thought of what it would be like to be in that moment, completely surrendering to one's fate, and by default feeling what it’s like to truly be alive.  For the most part, I do everything in my power to live my own life this way, but I have to admit that I also constantly slip out of the “now”, and into a battle of trying to control a myriad of “doomsday” scenarios.  I often find myself on the "same mast", in the "same storm", foolishly trying to calm the entire ocean.  If this is something you can relate to, you know how exhausting it can be. 

A perfect example of this played out in the past when I went through a period in my life of extreme stress, which unbeknownst to me was something I expertly suppressed.  It wasn’t until years later that I could look back with a trained eye and see what was happening. During this period of my life, I would often wake up in the middle of the night completely soaked in sweat.  To the point where I’d have to change the shirt I was wearing before going back to sleep.  It left me feeling confused, because even though I knew it must have been stress, I had no idea what I was stressed about.  I thought everything was fine in my life.  Things got so bad that I found myself going to bed saying out loud, “Ok stress, I don’t know what you’re worried about exactly, but if you want to wake me up, covered in sweat, then go for it!  I don’t care anymore!”  At the time, it was the closest I could get to a Sergeant Dan moment.

Well, what do you think happened?  You got it!  On those nights, I slept like a baby, while being reminded about the power of surrender.

Surrender is a subject that I think should be mandatory teaching in every school on planet earth. Not to be confused with giving up, which is very different, surrender is what happens when you stop trying to control the uncontrollable. For some that might be a job that’s just never going to get better, while for others it could be a family member that’s never going to change.  It’s a point in a person’s life where they choose to accept things as they are, and to just go with it.  

I’ve come to learn that the act of surrender can often be the only sane choice a person can make, for any other choice is detrimental to their soul.  When they finally make it, they begin to see the potential outcomes they were once blinded to, while feeling the joy of detaching from future pain and misery.  Again, surrender is not the same as giving up.  Giving up is what a person does after a few tries, and not getting the result they wanted.  Surrender is what a person does after they’ve tried everything they can think of, and the results haven’t changed.  Giving up feels like a cop out, while surrendering feels like a lifeline.  

We all have to surrender at different points in our lives, and only you will know when that time has arrived for you.  When it does, I hope you find the courage to let go.

Much love,

Stuart

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