You are not the doer.

Surrendering and giving up the illusion of control

My aunt fell seriously ill the day I visited her.

Last year, I took a sabbatical in 2025 to travel. One of the stops on the way was to go to India and spend time with family. I was especially looked forward to spending time with my aunt. This is the first time, I truly had time to spend with her. There was no agenda, no flight to catch in a typical trip to India that lasts a week.

I did spend time. In a completed unexpected way.

We ended up in the hospital that night.

Earlier that morning, she joked that her time to leave earth has come. Prophetic.

She looked reasonably well for the first few days.

We kept hoping each day would be the turn. That the next test would finally show improvement. That tomorrow she’d stabilize and we could breathe.

It never did.

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It was like whack-a-mole.

Get one thing under control, another system shutdown up. We moved her to a bigger hospital. Better care, more tests, more expertise.

Same pattern: on and off, stabilize then cascade down. Same result.

Once the tipping point hit, the shutdown happened fast. Two weeks total.

She was gone.

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During those weeks, I kept trying to help.

Find better doctors, ask better questions, research treatments. I have seen this pattern a few times now, as shutdown of various systems cascade, you are an ant on a twig in running water of fast moving spring.

In this case, somewhere around day 4 or 5, I noticed something.

I wasn’t steering this.

Effort was happening—conversations, decisions, hope. But I wasn’t the one doing it.

I was just there, watching it unfold.

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There’s a text from ancient India called the Ashtavakra Gita.

It’s considered one of the original non-dual philosophies.

It says:

You are not the doer, and you are not the enjoyer or sufferer—you are the awareness in which all actions appear.

I used to wonder why no one taught me this earlier.

Now I think: because you can’t really teach it. You have to see it for yourself.

And I saw it in those hospital rooms and ICU.

Family frustrated with the doctors who are up against it. Keeping the ant on the twig while they try to find the nearest off-ramp off the river. I feel for them—an impossible job in the ICU—nothing they can do is going to be enough.

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Though, this isn’t just about hospitals and dying.

It’s the same with work that doesn’t land despite perfect execution, relationships that won’t shift no matter what you try, plans that fall apart for no clear reason. Most of us carry a background belief:

It’s on me to make this work.

That creates a particular exhaustion.

The feeling that if it goes wrong, you didn’t try hard enough. The constant strategizing, optimizing, pushing.

But sometimes things just move in their own direction. You are in the river of life.

And no amount of effort changes that. You can show up, care deeply, give everything—and life still does what it does.

Not because you failed, but because you were never in control to begin with.

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When you stop fighting that fact—even for a moment—something softens.

Actions still happen, you still show up, you still care. But there’s less self-blame, less constant strategizing, less feeling personally targeted by outcomes you never controlled.

Not powerless.

Just not in control. There’s a difference.

And that difference changes everything.

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You are not the doer. You are the awareness in which all actions appear.

I’m still sitting with that. Some days it feels like relief.

Other days, it feels unsettling.

Both are true.