"Surrender" in this sense means something like fully facing reality and not demanding that it be other than it is. Easier said than done, of course. Someone who can do that probably becomes more capable of action, because they can bear the consequences of their actions.
There's a story of Beckett walking with a friend in Paris when a guy approaches saying how he's just been robbed and can he have Beckett's jacket. Beckett takes off his jacket and hands it to him. They walk on. The friend says: "why did you do that? he obviously made that up". Beckett says: "I couldn't take the chance of being wrong." I'm not sure why I thought of that just now, but he was clearly an extraordinary human.
It sounds reminiscent of some principles coming from stoicism. I'm not well versed in these concepts but it doesn't sound too far-fetched as IIRC parts of stoicism have been adopted by later currents of thought.
it sounds similar to Taoism's "be like water", the orthogonality is also in the concept of ying/yang it seems https://www.einzelganger.co/be-like-water/
In the abstract, I agree. But certainly for many people they may seem intuitively to go together -- see, for example, the comment of another user in this same thread, who asks "I wonder how does this feel in practice? what does it feel like to be without striving? to surrender? I understand this intellectually but I struggle to understand this in practical terms."
All I was trying to emphasize was that the practical, real-world side of Beckett was substantially more bold and generous than one might suppose based on some of the themes in his art, which is a point your anecdote about the jacket also makes.
Which is nowadays reinvented as mindfulness, if I understand correctly.