We live in an era of the clenched fist. Whether it’s the way we argue about the economy, the future of the borough or the nightly news, there is a prevailing sense that if we just grip our opinions tight enough, we can stop the world from changing in ways we don’t like. We treat our certainties like anchors, hoping they’ll hold us steady in a storm.

But there’s a quiet exhaustion settling in. You can feel it while out and about and see it in the Facebook comments sections. The harder we grip, the more our hands ache.

Or, even though Wrangell isn’t known for its sandy beaches, grab a handful of sand and make a fist and see how much you hold onto.

Much of our modern unrest comes from a simple, physical misunderstanding: We believe that tension equals control. We think that if we are sufficiently outraged by a complex problem—like the strange paradox of record high U.S. oil production meeting high pump prices—we are somehow closer to solving it.

In reality, we’re experiencing a form of mental friction. We have an idea of how the world should be, and when the world refuses to comply, we grind our gears. We are taught that the opposite of fighting is giving up; but there is a third option that we rarely discuss. It’s the act of observing a situation without immediately trying to beat it into a shape that pleases us.

There is an old observation that you can never step into the same river twice. It’s a cliché because it’s true. The river is a process, not an object. Our mistake is trying to treat the river of modern life as if they were static rocks we could move if we just had a big enough lever.

When we stop insisting that things be fixed and permanent, something strange happens: The anxiety starts to dissipate. This isn’t passivity. It’s actually the highest form of strategy. A captain who accepts that the tide is turning is far more effective than one who screams at the moon for moving the water.

The most polarizing views of our day rely on a 100% certainty rate. But what if we introduced a 5% margin of “I don’t know”?

Imagine approaching a heated debate not with a staff to herd others toward your side, but with an open palm. An open palm can hit anything, but it can also catch new information. It can feel the wind. It can adjust.

When we stop labeling every development as a personal victory or a catastrophic defeat, we gain the superpower of clarity. We start to see that the other side isn’t a monolith of malice, but a collection of people also trying to grip a handful of sand.

We don’t need a louder dog to bark us into the right way of thinking. We need to realize that the fence we’ve built around our opinions is actually a cage we’ve built for ourselves.

The goal isn’t to find the correct binary answer. The goal is to become the kind of person who can stand in the middle of a shifting, complex world and not lose their footing. That stability doesn’t come from the strength of our grip, it comes from the courage to let go.