Letting Go, Part 2

To “let go” is to fear less and love more.

Age 50 was a difficult one. 40 didn't do anything to my psyche. But 50 has been a very weird year. Very transitional as well. A new thought process has taken place. What once mattered no longer does. And the worst part is letting go of old thought patterns, dreams way past their prime and relationships that have outlived their usefulness and can't walk with me into the new place that is being forged as I write this. That is the saddest thing to understand. Dreams can be fleeting and can be replaced by new dreams, or refashioned into new versions. But relationships cannot perform in the same way. People don't change, at least not their basic traits and values. I look at people who have been in my life for a very long time who just don't fit anymore. It is sad because as much as I don’t want to let them go, I have no choice. We have no control in our lives anyway, as much as we think we do. And the more we try to control our lives, the more out of control we become.

Then I think of the adage, "Let someone go, if they come back to you it was meant to be". My fear is that they come back and I'm not interested. I read that letting go of someone or something feels like your skin has been removed and you spend a deal of time with it raw and exposed before it starts to heal up again. Letting go of something that has past its expiration date does two things. It opens you up t all sorts of new possibilities. That “thing” was taking up too much space and energy and nothing else could grow. Kind of like thinning out the forest so the new saplings can have light and room to grow. But it does another thing too.

Letting go forces you to look at what you are leaving behind with microscopic eyes. You see all of the flaws that were not visible earlier on. And a great deal of those flaws are your own. It hurts badly. I’ll be the first to admit it. It gives you the opportunity to live with those flaws, change them, let them work out their own issues without intrusions of your views and ideas, and last but not lease, work through the pain. There is always (at least in my world) the question of what I could have done differently to not have to be in this letting go place. Can’t help it – it is an ingrained, learned trait that I will fight with till the end. It also gives me the opportunity to lessen that trait a bit and let myself know that this is a normal pattern of life.

Things, people, change. Nothing is static. Someone told me that relationships are like a figure eight pattern. When you are in a relationship and everything is working fine, you are intersecting at the same place. Then over time or circumstances, one moves faster or slower and you aren’t intersecting at the same place anymore. Then you are out of sync. The question is if you will get in sync again or are permanently on a different course. The more you try to make something happen, the further away you get from it. Same with a dream. I have a dream of what I’d like to see happen but I’ve learned painfully that I must let it find its path (with a small amount of help on my part) and give it the freedom to change and grow. Just like a child, it wants its own freedom to explore.

Life changes course on a regular basis. Who am I to fight where it wants to go? I can put my wishes out in the collective conscious and sit back and wait to see what happens. The more I try to control or fight it, the further away it gets from me. All I can do is let it all go, plant the seeds and see what happens.

So I will try to fear less and love more, love myself more especially. To know that I am on the right path, whichever one it is, and to love where I am, accept the things I cannot change, and cherish the wisdom that comes from the pain as well as joy. For without the pain of change and letting go, one cannot know the joy of what is yet to be.

eden

Baubo's Garden