Letting Go [Post 36]

A very hard skill to learn, perhaps the hardest practice or skill to acquire in life is the “art of letting go.” If one can truly learn to let go in life, one can live a better life, a good life, even a great, joyous and happy life. Not being able to acquire this skill can wreak havoc emotionally and psychologically and mentally for one’s entire existence.

I feel very fortunate that I have been blessed with this ability as as innate part of my psychological makeup, or so it seems. Of course I’ve been hurt, I’ve been through some really dark periods, perhaps abused and abandoned at times. I’m not denying deep hurts in my life. But, I have been able to, with time and personal inner work and occasionally assistance from others been able to heal my wounds and move forward. Healing and moving on has saved me much mental turmoil and allowed me to live a freer, fuller life. I’m so glad I am not a clinger, a hanger-on to both bad and good experiences. I feel one of the great teachings of Buddhism is to not have attachments, to not cling to desires.

Now, I know what I just said can be easily misunderstood and often is in our culture. Desires and attachments and clinging and greed are big things in our society. They are normal, most people would say. But, I say the more you can eliminate these habits, the better off you will be.

Lets take bad experiences. We all will have bad, hurtful, even tragic experiences in life. Just gonna happen. They can destroy us if we can’t move through them and find some way to heal from our wounds. Death is one of the hardest experiences to go through. No one can avoid the horrible feelings of losing a loved one in death. Well, except for the psychopath or sociopath personality. I’m talking about normal people.

Some people get stuck at that point. They have experienced the gut-wrenching experience of having a loved one die, gone completely and forever from this earth. We feel we’ll never get over the loss and some people never do. I’ve come to believe that may be true. In fact, I believe that it may be true that we never really “get over a death of a loved one,” but we can “get through” the loss and have a great deal of healing from the experience over time, often a long time. On the other hand, some people never recover from a tragic loss, they are permanently damaged. I saw that in my mother, when her father died when I was a little kid. She went off the deep end, as they say. She went mental and never recovered, just got progressively worse over the years until her death when I was twenty-five.

I have experienced the death of loved ones and friends as difficult times. I have grieved. I have eventually gotten through the grieving and moved on in life, not forgetting the loss, but accepting it as part of life. I certainly don’t mean to minimize the depth of hurt or the sometimes long process of healing. What I’m saying is that I don’t get permanently stuck in a bad mental state.

Now, besides the death experience, there are lots of times during our lifetimes that we have to “let go” of things and experiences and periods and phases of our lives. I’ve had to let go of my first experience of having a life partner. It was a sick relationship as I see it. It was bad, psychologically and emotionally. It was very unhealthy, as I see it now. I have had to let go of friends that were not good for me in my life. Friends and acquaintances who were mean, nasty, crazy, unbalanced, etc. Haven’t most of us? Not always easy. Not pleasant, but such a relief once we have done it and healed from our “sin” (mistake) of picking the wrong people to have around us in our perhaps more “needy” times.

I have had to let go of some loves and pleasures of my life. I relinquished my wonderful “hobby” of piloting airplanes, my childhood dream come true. I thoroughly enjoyed the many years of flying, but the time came when it was too expensive and I didn’t have the time to keep up with all I needed to do to keep my licenses current and active. Yes, I have friends that don’t understand how I could give up that great love in my life, but that’s okay, they don’t have to understand me. I just knew the time had come to “let it go .” I did what I had to do at that time in my life.

I had no problem retiring from my airline career. It was mostly a great experience, my thirty-three years as an airline employee. I had picked the right industry and field of work for me and really loved it. But after my time there, I easily let it go. I know some friends that have a very difficult time retiring, adjusting to a new lifestyle, but not me. I had my great time working and it was time to go, time to begin a new experience of being “retired.” Yes, it did take a time of adjustment in some ways, but my head was good with it all. I let it go!

Looking at a different aspect of letting go, I’ve also had to let go of some assumptions and dreams, expectations and promptings of society and friends that were not right for me, in all honesty. I had to give up the assumed role in society of becoming a “family man,” getting married (heterosexually, of course), and having children, you know, that whole experience. It was in my twenties that I realized that dream, that picture was not going to happen for me. That was not the path I would want to choose. I had to let go of that expectation. I had expected that after college graduation I would follow the plan and become a stereotypical family man with all the trimmings. There was a different path awaiting me.

So, life is a lot about living true to yourself, enjoying the good times when they come along, not grasping to hang on to them (yes, the good times), and also experiencing the dark or bad times and also not grasping and holding on to them, also. The bad times, I feel, must be worked through, doing whatever work one must to get centered again in life, grieve, and move on. Always working to be emotionally healthy, balanced, authentic, joyous and happy, that’s the formula for living a good life, as I see it. Not resisting what reality is staring you in the face right now, this moment. Handle it, heal it, and move forward.

Now, as I write this, the world is going through a complete upending of everything, with the virus affecting the entire world. Talk about “letting go!” We are being forced to let go of so much, all at once, almost everything which we consider a normal part of life. Living freely, gathering in groups, socializing, going to events. traveling, going to restaurants, whatever. Everything we took to granted as just a part of everyday life. We have had to let go, period. Not much choice involved. Just mundane shopping now involves dressing up in protective gear and avoiding people.

So, of course we will all have to experience that final, grand letting go of all time. The letting go of life on our death bed or wherever. Yes, I know in our culture we avoid all thought of this final release of all we are, all we have been, with no hope of anything more in this life, on this planet. All of life. Adios, farewell, and all of that. The big release, letting go. How do you feel about that? How have you handled that thought? Will you handle that thought with the time you have left? Personally, I have had two experiences in my life where I faced my death. I mentioned them in previous blogs. I have a feeling those experiences will resurface in my final hours or minutes in as vivid a way as they did previously, except this time I will know that “this is it, for real.” Perhaps there was a reason I had a dress rehearsal for this event many years ago.

To sum this all up, letting go is a good skill to have as we navigate through life. A difficult skill for most of us, an impossible skill for some of us. It will affect how we live our lives. It will affect our deep serenity and happiness and joy in life, I believe.

Wally