Let Go…

Vinny Khinda

October 2, 2020

I had a job. Comfy, cushy and well paying. Kept at it for sixteen long years. Time just flew, maybe because everything was so familiar and pleasant. But then came a time when monotony began to set in. Finally, when it came to upholding the principles I had stood up for all my life and it was exactly the same edifice that was being challenged, I knew it was TIME. Time to move on. Time to Let Go… And I have not repented. On the other hand, it liberated me. It set me free. I was soon flying and have not stopped ever since I made this very important decision of my life few years ago. This simple act of letting go of what I had been clinging on to for far too long has allowed me to start living my dreams, all that stuff I had ceaselessly craved to partake in. Letting go is awesome. Letting go is unshackling. Letting go is release of enormous energy, much greater than those 15000 tons of TNT dropped on Hiroshima. Letting go means giving the future a chance. It means choosing the unknown over something you  got familiar with. Sometimes you need to let go and see what happens…

Author C. Joybell. C. puts it very aptly when she says, “We can’t be afraid of change. You may feel very secure in the pond that you are in, but if you never venture out of it, you will never know that there is such a thing as an ocean”. Speaking further on the virtues of letting go, she says, “Last night I lost the world, and gained the universe”.

This is so true. Life has to be like a river, forever replenishing with fresh water. There is no scope for stagnation. The pond stagnates, many times it even stinks. Not the river. Rivers are a great teacher. The great mystic Lao Tzu, the ancient philosopher and founder of Taoism says, “Be still like a mountain. And flow like a great river”. Flow you must, in other words, travel you should, but be good at it as Lao Tzu further explains, “A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving”. Have no fear of those boulders and just keep flowing, as does the river. Someone has described this so beautifully… if you can’t control the current of the river, then don’t fight it, just go with the flow. The Turkish-British writer Elif Shafak takes it a step further when she says, “Do not go with the flow. Be the flow”.

Toxicity comes in many forms. One of them is in the avatar of people. Some of them are so venomous, so spiteful and malicious, you would be better off without them. Forever talking doomsday, they are the ones who pull you down. Typical of them is not to feel happy for you when you make progress or do good in life. Their energy is spent on belittling and ignoring your achievements. Let go of them. For your own sake. For the sake of all that you can accomplish, but for their ‘can’t be done attitude’. Decorated military veteran and American writer Dr. Steve Maraboli has very clear thoughts on this. He says, “If people refuse to look at you in a new light and they can only see you for what you were, only see you for the mistakes you’ve made, if they don’t realize that you are not your mistakes, then they have to go. Letting go means to come to the realization that some people are a part of your history, but not a part of your destiny”. Some associations might be decades old, but if people refuse to part with their negativity even when you have given them ample hints and abundant chances, even tried reaching out to them on occasions, then it is time for them to go. I speak from personal life experiences of getting rid of some dead-wood. Respect yourself enough to let go of people who don’t see your worth…

On the other hand, have you ever picked up the phone and called someone you had fallen out with? I recently did that. There is this person who had been very close to my heart, but unfortunately we had parted ways few years ago. All it needed was one phone call, one exchange of greetings and I reclaimed my friend. It was not worth the anger. I was allowing this person to live rent-free in my head. Energy is everything. I released myself from the imprisonment of past grudges and anger. Sometimes people deserve the benefit of doubt as well because on some occasions, the grudges might be real, but many times they are perceived; in my case, probably the later scenario was true. Holding on to a grudge doesn’t make us stronger; it only makes us bitter. We have to be very careful where we spend our energy, because we won’t get that time back. How true is this observation by someone unknown, “When you hold grudges, your hands aren’t free to catch the blessings”. American actor John Stamos nails it perfectly; he says, “It doesn’t take strength to hold a grudge; It takes strength to let go of one”.

Finally, I would like to examine the fact that many times we are too hard on ourselves which actually is counterproductive for our growth. We keep cursing ourselves for not having done something differently in our past and which impacted the course of our lives. We need to let go of the illusion that it could have been any different... We need to let go and detach ourselves from unpleasant, meaningless or harmful thoughts and feelings. In this process, we would free ourselves from the emotional burden and stop taking things personally; this will let us remove from our lives anything that keeps us in the past and which does not let us move forward. Yes, we need to stop dwelling on the past. It needs practice, but eventually we are able to do so. It is useless to live in the past. We cannot bring it back, and if the past was bad, why relive it in your mind? Living in the past is like throwing an anchor in a dangerous sea, where there is bad weather. It is absolutely not necessary to do so. Further quoting Dr. Steve Maraboli, this is what he has to say about forgiving ourselves and letting go is concerned – “It is important that we forgive ourselves for making mistakes. We need to learn from our errors and move on. Accept yourself, love yourself, and keep moving forward. If you want to fly, you have to give up what weighs you down. Renew, Release, Let Go… Yesterday’s gone. There’s nothing you can do to bring it back. Release that attachment. Today is a new day!”

“Don’t let the darkness from your past block the light of joy in your present. What happened is done. Stop giving time to things which no longer exist, when there is so much joy to be found here and now.” (Karen Salmansohn)

Learn To Let Go!! Because letting go is beautiful, it teaches us survival. Letting go means finding out who we are. It means allowing ourselves to fall in love again. Letting go means creating our own place in the world. It means uniting with our kind of people. It means doing the things we want, the things that get us going, the things that give us a 100 million reasons to live. It means being kind when we’re hurt. It means having faith when our mind is clouded with doubt and it means being loving when our heart is on fire. It means dancing when we can’t hear the music and it means singing even if we don’t understand the lyrics. Letting go means going with the flow but still painting our own reality.

Letting go means accepting the things we can’t change and doing something about the things we can. It means choosing our battles; knowing what’s worth fighting for and what is not. Letting go means we have lived. It means we have tried. It means we felt something real. It means we gave even if you have not received. It means we’ve been open. It means that we fell hard but that we rose high.

Letting go means we have loved. And it means that we have been loved!

Letting go means we experienced magic in this life… even if it was for a little while!!

 

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