Up, Up, and Away !

What does let it go mean? I’ve always wondered. I’ve also always had a slight aversion to anyone telling me or anyone else to do it. Truth is, I don’t completely understand what letting it go actually is or what it entails.

The suggestion that we need to let something go also suggests that we’re holding onto, grasping, or clinging to it too tightly, which begs the question, what does it mean to hold onto something, particularly a thought or feeling? Alas… always more questions than answers.

Feeding the pain

Holding onto a thought or feeling can mean many things. But one way that we hold on is by continuing to re-think, re-tell, and ruminate over painful thoughts and experiences. We mentally rehash the source of our suffering even when it’s not organically present in our now. We bring it into our now by talking about it, engaging with our thoughts about it, and actively invoking the difficult feelings or whatever else is stuck to it. It can feel as if the pain itself is compelling us to feed it. And we are, paradoxically and strangely loyal to our pain, and driven to keep it alive.

Up, up and away with the hurt and pain

Letting go then is the practice of restraint, refraining, of less not more. It’s breaking the habit of continually re-introducing thoughts and feelings that cause us pain—declining the mind’s seduction to replay our grievances in the hopes of figuring out a better outcome or solution. So too, letting go is resisting the urge to build a storyline out of our experience—getting in the habit of feeling our direct experience on its own, in our body first, and perhaps naming it if it’s helpful. But, and this is the key, leaving our experience there in the simplicity of what it is, without the who, what, where, when, and why, the what it means that follows and tightens our grip.

The power of choice

Letting go is not denial or ignorance; it’s not about pretending our hurts don’t hurt. It’s also not about willing ourselves into a pseudo-okayness with something we’re not really okay with. Some traumas are simply not let-go-able. But letting go is a process of stopping—stopping to cause ourselves further suffering when we don’t have to. Some grievances will fade away when we stop stoking them, some will remain painful when bumped into. It’s not really up to us. But what is up to us is the choice to stop awarding our grievances with our habitual attention, romancing them if you will, parading them in front of others and ourselves to see, again. Furthermore, we can choose to stop feeding and growing our hurts with more thoughts about them, the storylines we write which intensify their importance and power.

Choose to let it go

Imagine holding onto a little bird, holding it tightly because we want to keep it from flying off and leaving us. That little bird is our pain. We grasp onto that pain because we believe that keeping it, remembering it and feeding it, is a way of taking care of it, and thus ourselves. But what if we loosened our grip on that bird, opened our hand a bit. That bird might want to fly off. Our pain might want to fly off. Letting go is trusting that taking care of ourselves might mean not feeding our bird, but rather opening our hand and allowing our pain to transform and be free to fly.

Recognize when the possibility to take corrective action exists, if it’s worth taking, and then take it. But if there’s nothing you can or want to do about it, do yourself a favor and let it go.

Get some perspective.

Ask yourself how important this thing you’re hung up on really is in the grand scheme of life (and not just your own). Is it that serious, or dire? With all the tragedies, and all the other ways you could be spending your energy, should thinking about this thing really be one of them? In most cases, the answer will be no – and letting go, won’t be so hard after all.

Which means no more thinking or talking about it, accepting that I’m not perfect and acknowledging that my intentions were good.

To let it go, is to let love and peace flow. You can’t feel these things fully when your thoughts are tied up in stories of the past. Letting go is literally like waving a wand and granting your soul the peace it so desires and so deserves.

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