Intentionally or un-intentionally, we all have affinity towards controlling the people we love, and I don't mean controlling in a negative way, but I believe it is natural human reaction to have some level of possessiveness towards certain people or things because they bring us dopamine and hence, we feel special. We get so used to the concept of their existence that when universe takes them away from us, we go through excruciating pain to let go and often are left with an uphill task to become a whole without their presence in our life. Of course, the level of pain is very much dependent on the type of person – if you go through a breakup, you will go through difficult mental health days, or if your neighbor shifted to a new place, you may go through few days of discomfort, but your mental health will be just fine. So, is the art of letting go a life skill to possess to shield yourself or at least mitigate the effect of atomic-bomb type incident in your life?
Growing up, I always had a hard time letting go of my belongings even if I didn't need them. I wouldn't allow any of my schoolbooks from previous years to be thrown out nor would I let go of my favorite T-shirt. Fast forward to present, I recently asked my parents to not give up my cricket kit even though there is not a 1% chance I will play cricket professionally, ever again. Hence you get the point – I suck at letting go and maybe this isn't a good thing. Detachments are hard, maybe one of the most underrated pains one faces. But I have discovered that pain of letting go is intense for a short period of time, while the pain of keeping unwanted relations (romantic or not) or things, last for much longer and are less intense (after all these things do treat us with dopamine intermittently). We somehow learn to survive with the intermittent dopamine by keeping the relations in our life to circumvent the short burst of intense pain, and this is how one starts to settle for less than they deserve. Much of the difficult let-go's are the ones with people you've been involved romantically with in the past and your soul finds it hard to exist without them. I am totally aware that words can't heal scars that run so deep, but words are all I have so I will say that I have found peace in realizing the potential of how deep my heart can love another human even though we don't co-exist anymore. Knowing or distinguishing love from infatuation is a form of maturity which is only learnt the hard way and despite all the pain of a finished romantic relation, having the ability to understand when you love and when you infatuate is sort of a super-power. Such realizations help letting go of things you wouldn't ever want to, a bit easier.
I feel similar logic applies to a group of friends that were close to you in the past (could be in school or college). It is natural to out-grow the people you once vibed with because everyone is living a different life and trying to grow in different directions. The urge to hold onto them to the same stature you once did in the past is natural because it is difficult to explain yourself that people you depended on once are not longer the side wheels of your bicycle called the life. Maybe everything in the universe is interconnected and by letting go end up making space for new things to come into your life? I know I would buy a new T-shirt if I were throwing an old one and there is a good chance that this applies to all the unwanted relations in our life as well. One doesn't need to actively hunt for new relations, but when an unwanted relation is let go, it automatically creates space and energy for a new relation to develop in our life which might turn out to be better than what we were settling for before.
