Letting Go

The issue of letting go has become central to my thinking lately. I begin to consider that ‘letting go’ may be one of the primary and steady processes of living. It might be now necessary to return to Roth’s earlier novel, Letting Go for some additional perspective on this subject. In the colloquial, ‘letting go’ refers to losing one’s self to a sense of abandonment—to release the restrained (repressed) self to spontaneity, to unself-consciousness, and even to joy. Alcohol and drugs are aids to this letting go, and I suspect good sex results from it.

I am thinking of another ‘letting go,’ and one not unrelated to the above. I am referring to the letting go of roles which tie me to ways of being which no longer are life-giving. For example, I can no longer be the same father to the nineteen year old as I had been to the ten year old. When I try to be so, I engage in behaviors and emotions no longer appropriate, and entrap me in positions and situations no longer productive for growth and living. Spinoza knew such emotions as leading to states of human bondage; refusing to let go I insist on using scripts for the wrong play. I speak beautiful lines in improper settings. I enslave myself and the daughter.

And the nineteen year old sister cannot be the same sister to the fourteen year old as the fourteen year old was to the nine year old. Indeed, very often she can’t even be the same sister today as she was yesterday because today so much has changed from yesterday. She has to let go. And it is so hard to do so, especially if yesterday there was so much reward in yesterday’s relationship. And the letting go is acknowledges that what yesterday was satisfying reward is today unhealthy dependency. Letting go leaves us both free.

And so, we have to learn how to ‘let go’ of the singular nature of the relationship and the behaviors we have attached to it, though these behaviors and emotions must be, perhaps, stored and made readily available for a time when they might again be appropriate, though that moment might not ever again occur.