Letting go

“You’ve got to learn to let go!” She said. I said: “I am who I am”. I also said: “The demon is in too deep and I cant get it out”. I also said: “If I do I’ll fall down this cliff and die”.

I’m not schizophrenic, I really did give three different responses to the same remark. They were of course, in different contexts.

We were walking along North beach Durban where an ol’ timer was playing some Louis Armstrong on a beat up Les Paul replica. She talked about spontaneously doing a little waltz, and how cool that would be. I talked about how spontaneity is over-rated. It’s unromantic I know, especially considering the location: warm sea warmer air but cool breeze cold ice-cream hot sand all people all types animals included everywhere smiles all around. But no waltzing.

I said that the extreme of spontaneous is erratic, like a guy who paints his house a different color every day. Orange! Now pink! No blue! Purple! Pink with purple dots! He’s crazy, not cool. She said I’ve got to learn to let go.

I was sitting in my office, facing a wise spiritual guide. I was on the couch, he on the chair. The view is funny this way around. But he was more skilled at this, artfully removing the splinter like a man working on a tiny 1912 Titanic replica. This iceberg sank me some time ago, but the wound kept surfacing in strange places like debris on different shores.

I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to lose that memory, even though it’s presence tended to fester. That’s the trouble with wounds like these, they trick us into hanging on to them. They use nostalgia to romanticize the past. Or they try forgetfulness to hide the bad and reveal only the good. Or they try spite and the lie that holding a grudge means holding a weapon that can get some revenge. But they’re all tricks, at the end of the day hanging onto hurt or some bad experience never works out in our favor. He said I’ve got to learn to let go.

I’m hanging on a tiny tree attached to a sheer cliff. We’re both holding on, the tree and I, he with his roots and me with my fingers, both of us fighting harder than the other to stay attached. You’ve got to learn to let go, he said. Yes the tree, he said it. I think because he had a better chance at living with me off his back. “You’ve got to learn to let go!”

Sometimes you do and sometimes you don’t. If you’re hanging on a cliff and a tree tells you to let go, you don’t have to listen to him. Because if you do you may fall and die.

If you’re hanging onto bitterness or jealousy or hurt or sadness then you should let go. Cos if you don’t you may fall slowly and die slower.

If you’re hanging on to who you are and your unique personality and don’t want to be spontaneous? I think hold on. If the whole world let go there would be chaos, and anarchy and we’d run out of house paint.