Dear Diary,
When we try to look at a map of the river of life, we do our best with the information we have available. While others deny reality, substituting their own to the detriment of the rest of us, doing so is another way of planting a flag in the timeline and refusing to live in the present. We who flow with the river, have dreams, get excited about opportunities, and do our best to make life better. We can see how one thing leads to another in our minds and become enthusiastic about putting the paddle in the water to get started. For a brief moment, we have it all figured out. However, the map we look at is vastly incomplete, and we have to make changes frequently.
Letting go of many of our dreams and plans is a part of growing up. More importantly, letting go of the mistakes chaining us to the past is essential to maturity. Letting go is not the same as forgiveness; letting go is more akin to flat acceptance. “This happened.” Judging the event brings us back to our memories and feelings of it but reliving the event doesn’t change how or why it happened. Letting go removes our attachment to that place in time and casts us off the pier back into the river.
Letting go of our dreams and plans isn’t always easy. Sometimes, we want something for ages, but it never manifests, and at some point, we do more harm holding on to the dream rather than moving on. Perhaps we wanted to be something, but our limitations and aspirations don’t line up. Maybe we wanted to own or do something, but our available resources don’t enable the purchase or activity. Often, we grow in a different direction and have to realize that we aren’t the same person anymore. It isn’t that we were wrong for holding on for so long, but our true desires lay elsewhere now.
A significant percentage of the difficulty in letting go is that we don’t know what we want. We once knew or enjoyed someone else’s ideas and then fell under sunk-cost fallacies. Instead of taking the time to be in a meditative non-judgmental state and allowing the path to open up before us, we make a decision because we feel we always have to be doing (something). There is pressure all around us to be doing something, but how often do we slow down before hurting ourselves somehow. Hindsight is 20/20 but do we give ourselves the space and time to prevent injury rather than analyzing why we got hurt? Once we get hurt and slow down, we must practice letting go again, further complicating matters.
The river flows forward, but we don’t have to paddle along every moment trying to get ahead of it. There is no getting ahead of the river of life, only experiences we miss rushing forward so fast. When we combine practicing ‘enough’ and being present, rest will present itself. Perhaps one of our dreams way deep down resurfaces, and we get a new perspective on it, solid enough to be actionable. Maybe we build that house we’ve always wanted to, take that train trip, capture that photo, or whatever makes us feel better in the present for doing since we’ve let go of the dead weight dragging along the bottom of the riverbed. Let go, you are worth it.