On Letting Go
The Funeral of a Viking — Frank Bernard Dicksee“No matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories.”
- Haruki Murakami
Life is, to a great extent, very hard to endure, the comfort of childhood dissolves in adulthood, the freedom of innocence slowly fades with the understanding of the world and its ways, and facing all these whirlwinds of life, we stand alone, amid all the odds of having company, family, friends, yet the loneliest moment in ones life is when we have to let go of things that mattered the most to us, people who were the closest to us and memories that helped us stay strong.
Letting go, of all the memories of what once was, how we used to live and keep ourselves moving ahead, of all those places that have our footprints imprinted upon their surfaces, of all those people who made us feel loved and showed us that we too have someone to live for. Makes it all a part of life, and letting go is a part of life too, it is, unfortunately the part that shows us, despite having to change every aspect of our life, we can still come out of it alive, and almost every time, stronger than we entered.
“And if letting go was an art, every turn of the road would have an artist trying to master the art and attain perfection…”
Letting go of the person and letting go of the memory of the person are two completely different feats, while letting go of the person is both a physical and mental decision which needs minimal dedication yet a lot of courage and understanding, letting go of a memory of the person, of what you once had with them, of all the days of silent gazes and eternal waiting, of the misunderstandings and understandings, requires a power beyond normal human capabilities. But still, against all its absurdities, it is possible.
[He saw them not as people, he felt them not as strangers, they were his people and their presence — his home. He realized he can only look at the world and its people in two ways, one — those he can trust and feel comfortable around, and two — those whose existence is a mystery to him, and though that aspect of an alien element in your surroundings is thrilling, we end up differentiating between one and the other heavily. But this is not about that differentiation, this is about the transition.]
The transition from one form of understanding to another form. From one form of knowing and familiarity to the other, from loving to forgetting, from staying put, to moving on. Life transitions from the bright to dark shades, but the true impact of those shades lies in how we comprehend and react to their essence, sometimes, there is peace in darkness and even the brightest of lights gives us nothing but hopelessness.
How we relate with people is layered with multiple levels, though it is initially divided into two forementioned forms, the depth of emotionality or just the technicality of the desperation to survive has many branches reaching out their extensive and at times exhausting hands farther into our hearts. But it all comes down to one end, and it is letting go.
And more often than less, the very process of letting go is seen as an aspect of giving up, of quitting, but just like that, less often than more, people rarely chose to understand that letting go demands more strength than staying on. The demands of both these notions are very different, but the common point can be treaded out in pain. Staying on is painful when it is under hopeless circumstances, and giving up, or letting go is even more painful as it is almost same as giving up on the very essence of hope itself. And he who gives up on hope has no argument to prove that he is expecting anything from his life or for his life.
The art of letting go becomes the most essential part of life, as you move along navigating the ups and downs of life, you understand and experience certain things, certain people, certain comforts and discomforts, and in the end when the whole world demands you to put yourself first in order to keep on living, you turn to practicing the art of letting go. Because holding on to what once was, in a society which constantly forces the necessity to change everything around you is something of fighting for a lost cause.
But then again, it is not as easy to do it as it is to say it, sometimes, all you have left to remain in the realms of progressive sanity is the reminiscence of that very past which fell right through your fingers like grans of sand flowing away with the wind.
But in the aftermath of letting go, after having moved on, one walks in the lush green gardens of nymphs and angels that have come down from far up above to show you there is beauty in the aftermath of destruction and and reconstruction. (I don’t believe in nymphs and angels, but I do in beauty…)
“Some birds are not meant to be caged, that’s all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure.”
― Stephen King, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption
Yet the process of letting go is not always the easiest, cause, holding on to those memories and people is the only thing that defines who you are and who you were, it is the only thing that asks you to recall your roots and origins, makes you humble of your life and the successes that have come your way along the flow of time.
So it makes us question — what is it that’s truly worth doing? What is the right thing, staying on or letting go? And the burden of finding the answer is for us to find out, as there is no two fingerprints that are same and no two lives that are exactly the same and is searching for the answers of the same questions.
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