The lessons we learn from “letting go”

The first time you ever consciously walk away from something or someone, be it a bad behavior, an unhappy relationship, an unjust system, or a way of life, I think the most incredible realization that you get is that you didn’t die! It creeps up on you, weeks, sometimes months, or even years after you have severed ties with what you walked away from. And if it was something that you at the time thought you couldn’t live without, your brain is flooded with ecstasy because you just realized that your life is beyond just that thing, person, or place. It validates the variety of your existence and the vastness of your universe. However, a realization that creeps in even slower is the ease with which the next “No” or “I’m done with this” comes.

First off, we walk away most times because the life we are living at the moment differs slightly or greatly from the life we think we deserve, and that can be either positive or negative. Our self-worth is a difficult thing to measure, it even feels harder or just outright impossible to quantify. And yet in the society we have built for ourselves, we must constantly do so. This means we must learn the art of “letting go”. Though I wonder where the line that separates having a healthy valuation of yourself and the chance of learning something new that could make the quality of your life improve is. The ease that comes with walking away from situations that make us feel uncomfortable should be monitored and managed to a healthy degree, I think. The “Nos” and the “I’m done with this” get lubricated the more we do it and survive. I can’t help but think that it might be an overcorrection to a solution that came from a much more intense period of our lives. Sometimes a situation requires a gentler and more thoughtful approach, it may require kindness, empathy, and investigations to properly reach a more Just and equitable reaction. But the pain from a lived experience and the ecstasy gained from outliving a hellish existence push us to become entirely disagreeable. And I think that is sad. It feels like we become softer and kinder and get taken advantage of, and then overcorrect by becoming so tough that we ignore and reject beautiful opportunities of growth and love, and experience.

Truly, life must be a balancing act of holding on and letting go, and the only role we play is trying to determine which decision to make and when, and why and how…

Written by Denzel Maniple Everd