Letting Go
I had intended to write a story about a pet that I owned a while ago. It was a great story, one that led the reader to visualize a great companion that I cared for both physically and emotionally to whom I was attached. While all of those things were true, the story was an analogy of how we all care for things that don’t serve us and eventually cause us harm. The pet that I was referring to was anger, self-doubt and confusion I harbored for a very long time. It was a story of letting go and why it is important to do so at times. I had finished the piece and then began to read it over and realized that I needed to let the story go – it truly did not express what I really wanted to say – that like I did with my story sometimes we all need to let go and it’s okay.
It’s as simple as that – let go. Unfortunately it is one of the most difficult tasks to accomplish. Individuals walk through life trying to get by and be happy. For most people, they do their best and life moves forward. However, occasionally something happens that throws everything into a tail spin. It can be a relationship gone badly, the loss of a job or even the death of a loved one. More often than not it is an event that under different circumstances would not adversely affect them. But it didn’t happen at some other time; it happened now and now the work to move beyond it seems to be insurmountable.
Every day I talk to people, intelligent clear-thinking individuals, who understand that the troubles they are enduring are due to specific issues within their life. They make no excuses, they understand that there life is out of control and differing emotions cloud the choices that they make. They usually understand what has caused the problem; they know that they are not making good decisions when it comes to the particular people and circumstances that are the center of their imbalance. They also know that they need to let go. In the end each of them asks the same question “how do I do it?” and this is where the conversation really begins.
As humans we make this process more difficult than it needs be. I say that as an expert in how to hang on to that which doesn’t serve me. That’s right; I’ve been there and done that as much as the next person. So I present these words not from a place of dispassionate advice, but rather as another traveler who has fallen into a few pot holes in life and has been given a helping hand to get me through the tough times.
Most people know when they are stuck and need help. They can’t get over a feeling, a person or an event in their life. Thoughts revolve around that “one thing” and their days are filled with a feeling that if only they could move beyond it all would be well in the world. In other words if they could get on with their life relationships would be better, financial situations would resolve themselves and in general their mental and physical well-being would improve. Friends and family may have even told them to “get over it” or to “let it go and move on” but they can’t seem to do so. The situation is impossible and the question comes back to “how do I let go”?
In
Reverend Mary Hudson