Learn To Let Go

Take a pause for a while. Look around you and count how many objects you are ready to let go. Is it your TV? How about your computer? Perhaps the fancy appartment itself? The new shoes? How about your girlfriend, job or career? How many of those concepts define you? How many get defined by you?

We seem to suffer constantly about most things in life whether animate or inanimate. We might not call it suffering but when they are absent we get anxious. These things might have a heart beat or be as vague as an internet connection.

[We could open a rather deep philosophical discussion in regards to defining “things” but let’s skip this for another time.]

How attached do we really get with these “things”? Perhaps we cherish them more than our own self without realising it. There is admittedly a special kind of joy when getting obsessed with new gadgets, new diets, new fashions. We let ourselves get into a spiral of confusion. We enjoy the high and we wish for the experience to never end.

“Things” end up being too complicated; too important. We can’t really escape from their grip. We don’t even realise how we got into this mind trip to begin with. We play with distractions and lose oneself in the process.

Learning to let go is quite easy for those we wish to step back from everything once in awhile. This can be hard for some since routine stands in the way 24/7. Repetition traps the mind into an automated behaviour. Living becomes a ritual; a song on an endless repeat.
 

Embracing the subjective nature of our world is the first step in learning to let go. Understanding that perfection is only the limit of one’s imagination the second. Learning to walk the talk with a gray (rather than a black and white) perspective, the third.

Every single bit of information known is the construct of someone else’s experience. Every single thing with value, every single ethic has been defined by others. We are only here to inherit the perceptions of others and then attach them onto our own creations.

If giving up control of something results in a psychological loss then we never really owned that specific thing. It owned us. As it broke apart it took a small piece of ourself with it.

Perhaps the hardest part of letting go occurs is when it comes to romantic/sexual relationships. We have been dictated from culture that we own in some way another person. Can we really own a person instructing them what they should or shouldn’t do? Can we really own another human being? What exactly do we think we own from another person? Aren’t the qualities we love about another person, our own ideals manifested via another entity?

Letting our loved ones go liberates first the self and then the others. The relationship becomes healthier with no constraints, no restrictions. We learn to understand our own passions, our own obsessions and weaknesses. Learning to let go of others sculpts the self into an independent being.
 

Letting go is not to be confused with giving up everything. Letting go is not deciding to become a hippy or go full Buddhist. Quite the contrary. Letting go is to understand the nature of what something is and through that understanding to be able to live without it. We often worship that which we don’t understand. When something is understood it can be conquered.

Modernity introduced way too much clutter in our daily lives and we rarely get to understand what is going on around us. We have become too uptight with our possessions, living life on a repeat—a mystified experience. We swap our “things” over and over again searching for more and more without being able to reach satisfaction. We become obsessed with money, love, religion, career, joining every single rat race that has no end.

If there is such thing as “happiness” it should be something along the lines or cutting loose all things that tie us down. Let your special someone enjoy their life. If they cheat on you then you save time. No internet? Bake that cake you always wanted without trying to find a wireless connection for hours. Not enough money? Who are we kidding. How much is really enough?

The power of letting things go manifests when things we used to cling upon come back to us with little to no effort. Control is an illusion. Sooner or later entropy takes over. Be entropy.