TO HEAR IS TO SURRENDER

> TO HEAR IS TO SURRENDER

To hear—

not the echo of my own asking,

not the chorus of my fears—

but the quiet that waits beneath them.

I came with a thousand sentences,

each one a small attempt

to hold the world in place.

I spoke

as though sound could steady me,

as though naming could save me.

But the more I said,

the less I knew.

So the words loosened—

their grip softening,

their urgency thinning—

until they fell

like rain that has finished its work.

And I was left

with nothing to say.

Nothing—

except to remain.

In that remaining,

I felt the tremor of letting go:

the need to be right,

the need to be heard,

the need to shape what would come.

To hear

was to release them all.

To stand unguarded

before what is,

before what cannot be moved

by my insistence.

And in that yielding,

I found not absence,

but a nearness

that did not wait for my words.

A presence

that asked only this:

Be still enough

to receive.

So I stayed—

not speaking,

not striving,

not holding—

but opening.

And what entered

was not an answer,

but a change.

For to hear

is to surrender—

and to surrender

is to be remade

by what we could never command,

but were always meant

to receive.  

Steven G. Lee 

May 2, 2026