About Letting Go

Letting go is growing up. This is something I’ve seen in Snow Falling on Cedars. Letting go of something that you hold dear. Of something that has been the defining object of your existence. You try to move forward but always hiding the pain. Trying to put up a brave face even though one is really broken and dying inside. The funny thing is that you are equivocal about the idea of salvation. To be spared of the pain is to be able to forget at the same time. That the old significance will be washed away by new events and a new happiness. You fear that learning to let go is disrespecting the memory, of burning all that you have accomplished. To go through life fresh, but with this freshness is the cost of nakedness, of being alone and vulnerable. Starting all over means having to climb up the mountain once again and risk the pain of tumbling down once more in a broken heap. Sometimes one gets to think that the human heart also has its limits. One feels one cannot go through the same thing again. And so one lives in fear, in anxious self-preservation. Living the life of a prey that can be devoured anytime. This is how comical the human heart is. Or human emotions in general. But emotions are part of what makes us human. It’s an integral part of our being. Our capacities for reason also assume our capability to make the worst choices in our lives.

When you can’t let go, you are filled with fear.

Back to the hesitation for getting salvation. We want to be saved, but we don’t want to. We don’t want the pain, but we want to always remember. But to remember is to get hurt. So that is the irony of the situation. Want to be relieved of the pain, but it is the pain itself that is the one thing you don’t want to let go. I can’t move on, because of the pain. Because of something important that will be lost. Somehow you feel it base to compare what is lost with what is going to be gained. You feel that this is something that is not a business transaction. It is not in the world of laws, reason and weighing of advantages. It is the world of feeling. The world of the soul. There should be a demarcation and you obstinately hold your ground. You can’t let up. You will not let up. You rebel and not accept exhortation of reality. You hold on stubbornly. You hold it with clenched fists placed against your heart. You dare not let go. You dare not let go.

The image of not letting go. You can’t let go of something that was lost. Of something that can never be recovered. You end up being like Gatsby, trying to bring back the time although he knows at the back of his mind that it’s not possible. He denies this fact even unto himself. He denies it so strongly that he deluded himself with the idea of Daisy and the green light. He was living with ghosts of his own creation. He was human right to the end. And he was innocent and pure. His means are questionable but I still believe he is one of the best chaps around. He was never bad out of malice. And his dreams are innocent dreams. But he was tragic in the sense that he was too pure, meaning stupid, to accept the facts that was presented to him. He also did not have the flexibility to change his life to pursue a different path. A different happiness. But how many of us can really do just that? And if somebody did, we admire them, but also think that something is wrong with them. That these people committed an injustice. A sin that is not easily pardonable. They learned how to forget. They learned to move on. And somehow, we find that unbelievable. We find it abhorrent. We detest the pain but we need it. We cry and gloat over our suffering at the same time. We live in an eternal contradiction. We can’t really let go. We dare not let go.

There should be a proper mindset to all of these. And what is the goal really? That it’s okay to let go? Or just to say why it’s hard to let go? Perhaps I’ll take the second option. To say and show why it’s difficult to let go. There are times when you just really can’t. Even when the wound is no longer fresh, even if the scar is only a blemish of what it once was, all you need is to remember. All you need is to have the right mindset and the right emotions. The right focus. The right soul for it. When seen during happy times, the pain of remembering might be weak, but with the right state of the soul, the tears and deluge of feeling will come back instantly. When you think about it in its purity, in its essence, you’re bound to feel like the wound was just received today.

As much as we hate noise, we need it for distraction. We need noise to silence the throbbing of pain and the screams of agony of the heart. We hate to be left alone, in front of the mirror. We need to be busy since we don’t want to be constantly reminded. If we’re constantly reminded, we’re going to die. We won’t be able to function. I have a soft spot in my heart for drunks and drug addicts because of this. You can have compassion, but forgiveness can be a different matter. We need something on our hands that will let our minds wander somewhere else. We need something that can point our attention to something else besides ourselves.