Why Freedom Requires Surrendering Control
The impulse to control, to structure, and to dominate the external world is often mistaken for an expression of freedom. We wish to craft our destinies, mold the future, and bend the external to our will, hoping that in doing so we will find a liberation that answers to no one. Yet, in this act of control, something critical is sacrificed — freedom itself. Freedom, as delicate as it is profound, does not arise from the dominance of one’s surroundings but from the dance between subject and object, between the self and the Other. Freedom, then, is not the possession of the self, but the reciprocity between the self and what lies beyond it.
At the heart of this paradox lies the obsessional neurotic, a figure who embodies the illusion of control. The obsessional mind, clinging to the desire for absolute control, seeks to secure itself by eliminating uncertainty. Every detail of life must be planned, every moment forecasted, every possible future controlled. But this desperate desire for certainty eradicates the very conditions for freedom. In controlling the external, the obsessional eliminates chance, and without chance, creation is impossible. For creation requires not the repetition of the old, but the irruption of the new. The encounter with the unexpected, with the unknown, is the moment when freedom awakens — painful, unsettling, and anxiety-inducing, but it is through this encounter that we become free.
Kierkegaard tells us that anxiety is the dizziness of freedom, and this dizziness stems from the open, indeterminate future, a future unshackled by our controlling intentions. Anxiety signals the presence of possibility, a vertiginous moment where everything is at stake. To be free, then, one must surrender to the uncertainties of the world, abandon the need for total control, and allow oneself to be influenced, changed, and surprised by what one encounters. This surrender is not passive; it is an active engagement with life’s unpredictability. Freedom does not exist in the eradication of uncertainty but in the ability to dwell within it, to dance with it, and to be altered by it.
Nowhere is this dance between self and Other more visible than in love. Love is the quintessence of freedom, for it is a continuous dialogue with the unconscious, a space where control is forfeited and the self is laid bare. In love, we do not decide, with rational clarity, the exact moment we fall; we are always taken by surprise. Love arises as an unconscious creation that the ego stumbles upon, realizing — often too late — that it is already ensnared. This surprise, this “falling” in love, signifies the moment when control is relinquished, and in that relinquishment, freedom is found.
To love is to surrender control, to embrace the uncertainty of another person and allow that person to reshape our desires, our expectations, and ultimately our sense of self. Love is not something we dictate or foresee; it is discovered, a revelation of both the self and the Other. In this revelation, there is a merging of two agencies — the ego and the unconscious — in a delicate dance where neither dominates, but both influence. The ego, accustomed to directing the flow of life, must listen to the unconscious, which operates beyond control and rationality. In this way, love is both created and discovered. The unconscious creates, and the ego discovers, and through this dynamic, love is born. It is in this sense that love becomes the ultimate expression of freedom: the more deeply one surrenders, the freer one becomes.
Yet this freedom in love often feels like its opposite. The deeper we fall, the less free we feel in the moment. Our desires, our actions, our thoughts become bound up with the Other, seemingly outside of our control. This paradox only intensifies the mystery of freedom, for it reveals that true freedom is not the ability to act without constraint but the ability to surrender to forces greater than ourselves — to be transformed by the unexpected.
The Art of Listening: A Silent Transformation
If freedom lies in the interplay between self and Other, then the act of listening is its most profound expression. We are often told that communication is the most important thing in a relationship, but communication is too often understood as an act of output, of speaking. Yet, the most transformative act in any relationship is not speaking but listening. To listen is to allow oneself to be changed by the Other, to suspend the ego’s need to control the conversation, and to invite the possibility of surprise, of uncertainty, of transformation.
Listening is, at its core, a surrender, a giving over of the self to the unknown. In silence, we become vulnerable to the Other’s influence. It is through listening that we confront the division of the self, that restless, indeterminate part of us that seeks to distinguish itself from itself. To listen is to open ourselves to this internal division, to allow the unconscious to speak, to surface, and to challenge the ego’s authority. In this process, the ego must reckon with its own limitations, its own insufficiency. The act of listening thus becomes an act of self-transformation, a painful but necessary death and rebirth of the self.
Real freedom involves not the control of the external world, but the transformation and control of the self. It requires turning inward, where the ego seeks mastery over its own impulses rather than over others. Consider the person who wastes time arguing with strangers online, desperate to change their minds. They are not free; they are enslaved by the desire to control the world, endlessly outputting without ever listening. True freedom lies in the opposite approach: listening to diverse perspectives with the goal of self-transformation. The person who values learning over convincing others finds freedom in the openness to being changed, seeing victory not in swaying opinions, but in allowing their own views to evolve. This surrender of the ego’s desire for external control creates the space for genuine liberation through listening, through ‘inputting’ information from the outside.
True, active listening requires not the mere passive hearing of the other’s utterances. To simply take in the other’s words is hearing, not listening. To truly listen, one needs to help the other express themselves, and in this way, to know them in a way better than they know themselves. The other person may struggle to put into words what they feel, what they think, and the listener must grab the words out of their mouth and drag the information out of them. The good listener must be able to reformulate the other’s words in a way that will make the other feel like the listener was able to put into words what they wanted to say better than they did themselves. This is when we truly feel listened to: when the listener is able to put into words something that we always wanted to say but didn’t find the proper words to do so.
In love, this listening is doubly significant. To fall in love is to listen not only to the beloved but to oneself — to the unconscious desires and drives that reveal themselves only in moments of deep vulnerability. The act of falling in love is an encounter with the unknown within the self, and it requires a silence, an attentiveness, that allows the unconscious to surface. Love is born not in the control of desire but in the listening to one’s own desire, in the surrender to its unpredictable and uncontrollable nature. The ego, in love, must relinquish its hold, allow itself to be guided by something deeper, something unknown, and in this surrender, it is reborn.
The Pain of Surrender: The Price of Freedom
To be truly free, then, one must embrace this surrender, this loss of control. But such a surrender is not easy. It requires the abandonment of expectations, of intentions, of the desire to dictate the course of life and love. It requires a willingness to encounter the unknown, the uncertain, the painful. And this encounter with uncertainty is precisely what creates the conditions for freedom.
The future, in all its indeterminacy, can only remain open if we resist the temptation to control it. By trying to control every aspect of our lives, by attempting to predict every outcome and eliminate every surprise, we predetermine the future and, in doing so, destroy the possibility of freedom. We close ourselves off to the new, to the unexpected, to the creative. Freedom, in this sense, is not the ability to control the future but the ability to live within its uncertainty, to allow the future to unfold in ways we cannot predict or foresee.
Love, once again, offers the most profound illustration of this principle. To love is to relinquish control over the future, to allow oneself to be surprised, transformed, and even wounded by the beloved. The perfect lover is not the one we seek or plan for but the one who changes what we seek, who transforms our desires, and who leads us into an unknown future. In love, we are constantly undone, remade, and renewed, and it is in this constant process of transformation that we find freedom.
Nowhere is this lesson most applicable than in Hegel’s master-slave dialectic, where the desire to control the external world reveals itself as a false form of freedom. The master, seeking to dominate the world through the subjugation of the slave, believes that freedom lies in the exercise of power and control over the Other. Yet, this control becomes a prison. The master’s identity becomes dependent on the slave’s recognition, and in this dependency, the master becomes enslaved by their own slave. The freedom of the master is hollow, for it requires the domination of another and is, therefore, bound by that very relationship.
The true freedom, paradoxically, belongs to the slave. Through acts of labor and transformation, the slave encounters the world directly, shaping it and, in turn, shaping themselves. The slave, who initially appears powerless, finds true freedom in the act of surrendering control — by engaging with the external world and being changed by it. The slave listens, adapts, and transforms, and through this process of transformation, discovers the freedom of self-creation. It is through the openness to surprise, the relinquishment of domination, and the willingness to be altered by the Other that the slave transcends the false freedom of the master and finds true liberation.
Freedom, then, is not a possession, not something we own or control. It is a dance, a reciprocal movement between the self and the world, between subject and object, between the ego and the unconscious. It requires surrender, the loss of control, and the willingness to be changed by what we encounter. It is painful, yes, and often anxiety-inducing, but it is in this pain and anxiety that the possibility of freedom arises.
To be free is to live without expectations, without the need to control the future. It is to allow oneself to be surprised, to be transformed, to be undone. It is to listen, to remain silent in the face of the Other, and to allow the self to be reshaped by what it encounters. Love is the ultimate expression of this freedom, for it is in love that we most profoundly encounter the unknown, the uncontrollable, and the transformative.
In this dance between self and world, between control and uncertainty, freedom emerges as the most delicate and elusive of states. It cannot be grasped, cannot be owned, cannot be controlled. It can only be lived, surrendered to, and experienced in the fleeting, fragile moments where we let go, where we allow ourselves to be changed, where we fall into the unknown.
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This article is an excerpt from my new book, “Freedom and Ideology”. You can read the book on Amazon by clicking on this link.
