Our nature as human beings is often in opposition to the surrendering and release associated with letting go. Logically we may understand it but our hearts long to hold onto the things that mean so much to us. The families that we have sacrificed parts of ourselves to create, the careers that we have devoted so much of our precious time to building year after year, the relationships that we’ve poured our hearts and souls into. How can we simply walk away when that chapter ends and a new one begins?
Because the ownership of any and all things is just an illusion.
How can anything be fixed in time as “ours” when all of eternity is a dance of continual movement, a flowing of energies connecting all that is? Our desire to cement experiences into stone only sets us up for disappointment because it goes against the laws of nature. A tree doesn’t decide to stop growing at 3 feet because it’s so enamored with that view. A wave doesn’t set up camp at the top of the crest, cutting off its experience before it heads into the descent. All of life is unfolding in perpetual movement . . . forward.
As Kahlil Gibran says in The Prophet:
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
Our time as a spiritual being having a human experience is meant to expose us to many different ways of being. Our soul craves knowing itself in all possibility. When we limit what we can receive because we are afraid to let go of what use to be, we stifle ourselves and the opportunities that are all around us waiting to be let in.
Choose today to see letting go as a viable part of the equation of life as each new beginning is.