Every day more and more I realize that the process of living, or learning how to live and appreciate life, is a process of letting go. Letting go of expectations, former selves, people, places, objects, what you thought you wanted, how you thought things would be. As we grow up, become adults, and grow old, we are in a constant process of changing, and if we aren’t able to let go of the past, we will never allow ourselves to step through into the next part of our lives and enjoy living.
Perhaps a definition of enlightenment could be the ability to let go of anything and everything and just let life flow. The opposite is to be so stuck on how things are, or how you imagined them to be, that you stay in the same place, knuckles white from clutching the railing. I think we all have our moments of both, but the greatest living is inspired by the sensation of flying that comes when you let go of the railing and let yourself blow on the wind. When you follow some whisper of the life you want to live, but give your dream room to change and lead you, appreciating being alive all along the way.
I am a planner and a dreamer—two things that, at least in my personality, lend themselves to holding on. I notice that I get especially hung up on how I think things will turn out and how I thought things would feel. For example, my vision of how adult life would feel was secure. I thought that I would arrive one day and just know what I was doing, and then life would be easy and work out the way I planned, kind of like in the Brady Bunch.
Imagine my surprise to arrive here and realize that being an adult is just as much flying by the seat of your pants, just as new and unsure and full of choices as being a teenager, actually more so because now you really can choose anything, and—as a line in a poem by Mary Karr says— “You’re your own idiot now.”
This difference between how I imagined things and how they are, trips me up endlessly. I find my brain gasping, “But this is not how it’s supposed to be” every time I get scared. I start to think I’ve made a wrong turn as more choices and more cliffs appear, when the truth is: this is just life. This is how it is. There are no wrong turns, there are just lots of choices.
As I try to pry each finger from the railing of “how I thought it would be,” what keeps me going is the dream of what it would be like to really let go and let things happen. Where would I find myself if I let myself be led? If I took the leap, even when I was scared, even when everyone else was telling me that it was too dangerous? If I could approach my life every day from a place of calm, possibility, acceptance and humor?
Letting go isn’t about jumping off cliffs or taking big risks, it’s about following your own heart in the most truthful way. This means cutting through all of the brain drama and enjoying the process of living, instead of trying to control it. This is different for everyone—one person’s heart might be saying “Relax, take time off, spend the whole day lounging” while another’s might say, “Get up and go, finally take that trip to Thailand,” or on a smaller scale, “just breathe.” The trick is to let go of what you think should be happening and start listening. Let a little bit of light into your heart and let life flow.
