Letting Go: A Paradoxical Truth

“A bridge can still be built, while the bitter waters are flowing beneath.”

Anthony Liccione

It’s often said that Letting Go of a past memory is like sitting with an open wound. No matter how much you try to divert your attention, multiple elements will drag your attention towards it. Whether it’s the residual pain, the past storyline on autoplay, or self-deprecating inner chatter, in a world filled with information from all ends, letting go has never been this difficult.

So why is it so difficult to let go of things which have long exited their course from our lives? Why do we find ourselves constantly hanging onto an image projected from our deepest insecurities? Why do we hurt ourselves even after knowing it’s not meant to be?

Here was my philosophy as a 15-year-old.
“People are fragile creatures. They need someone to feel significant, and as soon as that gets taken away from them, they feel worthless. So the point of life should be to avoid any human interaction at all.”
Or so I thought.

My little philosophy at that time had a caving hole more significant than the size of the universe. And that underlies human nature. We’re attracted to things that make us feel validated. From attention for a child to social media for an adult, we all seek validation in different shapes and forms.

Getting validated makes us happy otherwise, why would people crave likes, followers, and love.

But… It also creates a cycle of pain and inner conflict where a part of us holds onto that happy image while the other part scrambles the bits of identity to make sense of our environment amid the chaos inside our brain.
Moving back and forth only aids to deepen the crisis, while the inner struggle starts tearing apart our conscience. So we often find ourselves lost in our journey.

As a result, letting go of these habits become a necessity to feel alive again.

But what about losing something we hold dear? We’ve all had relationships that turned toxic but can’t seem to get them out of our heads. Friendships we hold onto even when it exhausts us. Or outright abusive family members. Why is it so difficult to let go of them even when we know they’re not good for us?

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room first. The human condition.

All of the things we experience in life shapes our reality. Out of them, a few become a part of our personality while the rest of them become our deep-rooted source of agony and lack. When someone or something validates our deepest source of hurt, we feel recognized.
Not only does it make us happy, but it also makes us attached to that source of happiness.

You know…like that feeling when that message from a certain someone comes, and you feel slight happiness, thinking that maybe this time, things will work out. That they really care. More often, it’s someone who fits right into that empty space in your heart.

Constantly checking social media for any signs of them while making up stories in your head justifying their absence. This cycle brings a sense of lack within us, making us think, “Maybe it’s something to do with me.” 

And when they leave, a part of us goes away with them, with a hope they’ll bring it back again.

I call it the “Companionship Curse.” The reason you find it difficult to leave someone is not because you love them, but because there’s a happy place that you have envisioned with that person. They fulfill the validation cycle. And any idea, thought, or realization that breaks that picture brings up past insecurities into the present. It’s a scenario that goes against that happy place.

Remember the last time you loved someone…and the way it made you feel. If in the end, all you had were justifying scenarios of how much you gave to the relationship…about how much you cared…then you were also a victim of the “Companionship Curse.”

There’s a reason we hold onto the bits and pieces of our past as a souvenir thinking that it protects us. The thing is, it doesn’t. It only adds up to our insecurities and makes us feel that the aspect of a relationship is inherently wrong. So a bad relationship where we ignored all the red flags and loved someone made us arrive at the conclusion that relationships are evil.

The “Companionship Curse” is the reason why it takes a lot of time for people to recover from a failed relationship or traumatic upbringing. The idea of a happily ever after that is portrayed everywhere doesn’t match the reality we live in. So to bridge the gap between the two, we do everything in our power to maintain the status quo.

Even when it hurts us consciously, letting go of a person, feeling, idea and emotion is not an easy thing. Confronting those feelings of unrest means resurfacing the past and, with it, the fragrance of the bittersweet memories that have become hollow. The pain of leaving that happy place makes us hold onto it even more.

But it makes letting go of that attachment and moving forward that much important.

I had this same realization a couple of months back while I was talking with someone. A part of me was longing for a deep human connection and wanted to connect with someone and talk about the unrest within me at that time. Covid made human connection minimal, and with no communication, I often found myself lost with multiple thoughts ranging from “What to look forward to?” to “What’s there left for me?”

It was a vulnerable time in my life with lots of emotions jumping front and back. Then I met someone, and things clicked sort of, but eventually, after some time, I was ghosted.

Since it was a part of me that got validated, it hurt a lot. Constantly checking WhatsApp, status updates became a kind of addiction. Nonsense messages, thinking of things to talk about, and waiting for replies kind of started hurting my internal monologue.

It took me two weeks to realize how messed up it is. And then, I started distancing myself from those patterns (and the person) and eventually beginning to recover from them.

The reason I was able to identify it was partly because I constantly write my feelings down in my journal, and more often than not I write about each and every wavering emotion and feeling I experience. It gets easier when you become the third person.

There I saw a person, far from being the perfect image, vulnerable, longing for someone to validate him, still insecure at times hoping for someone to heal his world.
Truth was, I was afraid to face my emotions again…alone. But it also made me realize that letting her go was the only possible storyline that would allow me to breathe again.

But what does letting go actually mean?
Does it mean removing someone from your life? Or does it mean rejecting any idea or thoughts arising from that experience?

People generally define letting go as getting over someone or something. Getting over something means subduing the past by overwriting it with some other memories. In other words, finding another partner, booze, or hobbies to let our mind wander off into something else.

The paradoxical truth about this statement is, in essence, it isn’t letting go. It’s just clouding your head with a new false sense of self.
Does it help? For some, “Yes” in the short term while, for others, it becomes a nightmare. The ones who succeed in getting over it feels like a righteous being. They constantly compare it to the loss of the one who has left them and try to showcase it outside. They shine brightly at the outside while drowning away in their self-absorbed world, afraid of processing any emotions.

For the rest, their mind becomes a troubling neighboring kid who doesn’t stop playing his daily ugly gigs. A part of them still reels with the past, while the rest of it tries to find a way to escape. And when they don’t find an escape, the inner monologue becomes much darker. They become miserable, both inside and outside.

In the long run, both of them suffer.

So what is it actually?
Letting Go is a Buddhist principle aimed at being present in the moment without being attached to anything. Although it’s a tall order, the general idea behind it is simple:

“Freedom.”
Freedom from the past and the future, especially making the mind at ease with it. Letting go actually signifies accepting the past you’re running away from while embracing the confusion and pain you’re experiencing imagining the future. It doesn’t have anything to do with getting rid of your past or future.

Now here things get interesting.

Letting go doesn’t mean living in the present. People think the key to letting go must be to erase our past and future experiences. But that would mean that the entire evolution journey we’ve taken since millions of years was a waste of time.

I believe, if given a chance, most people will drop their ability to remember, and to imagine.

Why? Because it’ll free them of their suffering. They’ll have nothing left to think about, a peaceful world, agree?

But then, what would be the difference between you and an earthworm? It’s the mind and our imagination that has given birth to so many blessings. From the bullet train to the seemingly complex Tinder, and from the chocolate milk we used to drink as kids to the Choco lava cake that we all relish. Now I’m hungry :(. It is the seed born from our deepest layer of creativity that gave rise to such beautiful things.

So it isn’t that the brain has gotten a mind of its own, separate from you. It’s just that we identify with our brains way too much.

When used as a tool, it can harness and wire our deepest inspiration towards things meant for the greater good or just let our creative juices flow into everything we do. But as an emotional fuel, oh man, it can turn the sweetest dreams into an endless pit of a self-absorbed nightmare.

Does that mean you’re wrong to feel that way? No, and I can’t stress that enough.

Feelings are ways we process this world. They are the doors to our existence, the entrance to our hearts. Every emotion contains with itself an ever-changing state of mind.

Letting go means connecting with those emotions deeper than the surface level and working alongside them. When you start connecting with your emotions and accept them even when it hurts, the world starts opening up.
The skies start to look blue again, and the people around you, a little bit beautiful.

It’s just like what I said to myself on a fine Thursday evening, “No matter how dark it gets, so long as I’ll keep my eyes closed, I’ll either keep on suffering in my own delusional world or feel at peace knowing the sun is yet to rise. Either way, I’ll just be suffering from my own ignorance. And getting hurt knowingly.”

So breathe. Let the hurt drown you in layers of emptiness and rile your fears, because inevitably the longer you’ll run away from feeling it, the more you’ll suffer your own voice.
Let the suffering become a gift, and then just like a sprinkle of morning dew falling off the grass, magical and breath-taking, let it go.

Because the paradox might seem like the only possible solution to our misery, but it, in itself, is the reason we suffer.

In our own minds…