Just “Let It Go”

Before I had any idea how to go about doing it… THERE WAS NOTHING MORE ANNOYING TO ME THAN SOMEONE TELLING ME I NEEDED TO JUST “LET IT GO.” Especially when I was in the midst of having a mental fit about something.

Maybe you can identify?…

Like when you get into a kerfuffle with your loved one about something that’s (usually not that) important but you KNOW YOU’RE SO TOTALLY RIGHT ABOUT. So, you keep trying to explain it in a way she’ll hear you. But, instead, she simply—and sooooo annoyingly lovingly—tells you to please “just let it go.”

Or, hypothetically speaking, when you finally arrive at that hip, new dessert shoppe you just spent 3 hours stuck in L.A. traffic driving to, and the ice cream “concierge”  tells you he just ran out of the artisanal organic salted caramel magic-shell-dipped quadruple chocolate fudgsicle – which is the SOLE reason why you traveled to the shoppe in the first place. So, upon receiving this news, you insist that he “surely must have at least one more left...” And you keep repeating this over and over and over again with the sincere belief that he will make this desirous dessert miraculously materialize for you. But, instead, he just stands there, disdainfully sneering at you with his hipster handle bar mustache and a sullen look of pity on his face before blurting out, “Look, lady. I suggest you let it go… All we have left is the paraben-free carob beet-green gelato made with sustainably sourced alligator milk from North Carolina. Want some of that?…” 

Ok, so – sure, one way or another, we’re forced to let go of innumerable things during the course of our lives—physical possessions, emotions, ideas, people, being right… Life provides myriad opportunities at every turn to practice letting go. But sometimes (read: most times), WE JUST DON’T WANNA LET IT GO. No matter how much we listen to that song from “Frozen.”

For the longest time, I refused to let most things go because I thought doing so somehow meant I was “weak.” But, somewhere down the line, I started examining the things I was attempting to hold on to (and why…), and I often found it took far more strength to let these things go than it did to try to keep holding on to them. And that’s when I realized…

Letting go doesn’t make me weaker. It makes me stronger.

As with many things in life, letting go is a continuous practice. And, although it certainly isn’t always “easy,” when we cultivate the capacity to consciously let things go (particularly the things that aren’t serving us), we strengthen our capacity to allow more ease, flow, and equanimity into our lives.

And this, my friends, just might come in handy when we find ourselves arguing over something that doesn’t really matter—or finding out there isn’t any more of that fancy dessert we thought we so desperately needed.