Surrender
Last weekend I went for a walk in the woods of the Southern Mid-Atlantic with Squirrelitude. We went barefoot. We went slowly.

On the other side of the woods was a half-grown meadow, with lush green grasses, maybe 2 feet tall. "Prime tick habitat," I remarked.

"That's what shorts are for," he answered.

I couldn't argue. More clothing might mean more protection, but ultimately we'd need to do a thorough tick check either way. More clothing also would mean more surfaces to check. We entered the grasses without any further precautionary measure, and 15 minutes later we were sprawled out in the grass.

It was then that I mentioned the idea of surrender. Of simply accepting risks, and working within those parameters, rather than armoring ourselves against all the known hazards. Shorts in spite of ticks. Lying in the grass. Bare feet in spite of thornbushes. Ultimately, we were happier.

I experienced something similar in the Fells a few weeks back. I bicycled there in Birkenstocks. Shortly after locking up my bicycle, I caught my foot on a sharp branch, which hurt quite a bit, and which I attributed to the obliviousness that comes with wearing shoes. I took my sandals off, and locked them to the bicycle. Then began my wander. I climbed over rocks up toward the fire tower. This was easier on bare feet than the gravel trail would have been, but also meant I passed through the fields of broken glass left among the rocks by late night picnickers.

Broken glass is commonly cited as a reason for not going barefoot. Actually being there, though, I found I didn't feel any fear. I had the luxury of going slowly, and I knew that if I started to step on anything sharp, I could simply not complete the step.

A couple of weeks later I was back in the same area with Xuth. We bicycled up the gravel trail to the tower, it was cold, and I was consequently wearing my sandals again, this time with heavy socks as well. The same broken glass that had seemed irrelevant before was now terrifying. With shoes on, I wouldn't know what I was stepping on until I'd committed my weight.

I think of surrender as accepting the risks of daily life, rather than continually fighting them. Working to respond to your environment, rather than striving to surround yourself with total safety. A component, too, has to do with the evaluation of risk: weighing the costs of protection against the risks themselves.

This sort of issue comes up all the time: self-defense (don't walk alone at night? don't walk alone at all?), food supply (pasteurize everything?), medical treatment (exploratory surgery? antibiotics just in case?). At the same time, healthcare at a societal level is frequently approached as though if we could just find a few more cures, people would live forever. That's just not the way it works. There are inherent dangers to living a fulfilling life, and sooner or later death will catch up with you. I don't understand why our culture fights so hard against surrender and acceptance of everyday risks.