Back in the eighties, there was a well known graffiti in Caracas, scribbled in a wall along a frequently used highway. A free translation would read “I know I know, if you love something you should let it go, I know… but fuuuuuck”. A feeling that many of us have definitively had, when letting go of a person, or a situation and then realizing that they does not need us at all, and actually… go. I suppose that this is what makes it scary, to let go and realize that after all, we are not even needed.
And then again, we also know the freedom, the clear relief when we actually stop helping something, or somebody, and they take off and go on their own terms. Not being needed is also that gratifying. If we can make ourselves redundant, we have done something well, haven’t we?
So then, what does “let go” mean? Is the whole thing aimed at discovering our irrelevance? or precisely the opposite, is the tool to discover that we have been so relevant that we can and should (and will) become irrelevant?
Me having a son of twenty years old, you can imagine in which kind of context I am thinking. Most of my time, though, I am aware that you can not really let go of your son, or daughter, since that phrasing assumes that you actually have the possibility of not letting go. Which is, obviously, ridiculous. No matter what you want, or what you think, or what you do, kids will grow and they will go. There is no letting there, it just happens. Perhaps the choice that we do have is to let us let go. We have the choice of proactively accept the going, and support it and foster it. And we all would be the better off, if we would take that choice.
Actually, there is nothing that wanting to go, you can stop. Call it a kid, or a companion, a friend, or a coworker. We do not own the life of anybody else, so why do we think that we actually have a choice in letting others go?
So again, if it is inevitable, why is it so hard?