I have never been good at listening. When someone pushes my buttons, I feel like Meilin Lee in the animated film Turning Red; seeing red, unable to hear. My body reacts before my mind catches up. I want to respond before the other person has finished speaking, before I have questioned to understand, before I have even paused to consider whether a response is needed at all.

I suspect I am not alone. Outrage feels like a defining posture of our time. Perhaps it has always been present, but today the volume is turned up. In our classrooms, lunchrooms, and boardrooms, listening, true, attentive, unguarded listening, has become rare.

Listening, as activist Valerie Kaur reminds us, is not passive. It is not simply waiting one’s turn to speak. To listen deeply is to surrender. And that word surrender, deserves attention.

In English, “surrender” often evokes the imagery of war: the weaker side lowering its flag, admitting defeat, unable to withstand the might of the other. It carries associations of weakness and failure, of giving up when the fight is too hard. But in many spiritual traditions, surrender is not weakness. It is strength.

In Hindu scripture, surrender is described as the highest path to liberation: letting go of the illusion of control, loosening the ego’s grip, and resting in something greater than oneself. In Buddhism, surrender echoes in the practice of letting go, releasing attachment as the way to find clarity, equanimity, and compassion. In Christianity too, the act of surrender is framed as trust in divine will, a yielding that paradoxically makes one stronger.

Modern science affirms what these traditions have long taught. Neuroscience shows that when we let go of the urge to react, our nervous system shifts from stress to regulation. Instead of defaulting to fight-or-flight, the brain’s prefrontal cortex has space to engage. Psychologists studying active listening have found that when people feel deeply heard, conflict eases, relationships strengthen, and collaboration improves. Surrendering the compulsion to speak first creates conditions for calm, clarity, and connection.

This matters in our workplaces more than we might realise. The culture of work often demands the opposite: fight harder, move faster, achieve more. The language of business values grit, hustle, and relentless productivity. Quitting is weakness. Pausing is failure. Surrender has no place in the performance review.

And yet, wisdom asks something different of us. Of course perseverance has value. But discernment is just as essential: knowing when persistence serves us, and when it depletes us. Sometimes letting go is not defeat; it is clarity. Sometimes surrender is not collapse; it is choice. By releasing what no longer serves, we create space to notice what truly does.

In that space, something shifts. The pace slows. The noise recedes. Listening ceases to be an act of defence or persuasion and becomes instead an act of reception. We allow ourselves to hear not just words, but meaning, not just arguments, but humanity.

And in that act of listening, we surrender not to the other person’s will, not to weakness, but to presence itself. In surrender, we discover that listening is strength. It is openness. It is, as Valerie Kaur teaches us, an act of transformation.