ATTACHED TO LETTING GO

The favorite wedding present becomes a garage sale item. A cherished birthday gift gets donated to charity. A work trophy comes down from the attic and finds the trash. The once beloved pet is given away to make room for a lifestyle change. Last month's lover is removed from speed dial when their bad habits overwhelm an initial infatuation that took hold when attachment was mistaken for love. One day, we would have taken a bullet for a best friend. The next day, we'll cross the street to avoid their path. The movie we once cried over as being so deep and profound now is campy and banal. A favorite song that inspired a hot romance is now passed over as a tiresome reminder of naive obsessions. No matter what it is, we cannot escape the fact that time and circumstances constantly morph our attachments.

But the effect of this is much more serious than we might suspect. Time and circumstances morph so much more than attachments. Attachments change only because the very meaning we give to things and the purpose they fill in our lives have already morphed before the shifting of how we see the attachment. We might ask, how much of what we think and feel as our meaning and value gets morphed by this? How much should? Everything? Doesn't anything meaningful retain value across time? And if something does, isn't it natural and healthy to retain an attachment to it? Or at least try? Are attachments good, irrespective of the effects of time, simply because they serve us in the moment? But our attachment to attachments extends beyond the moment and so how they serve us is always in flux. How much, if any, control do we have over this process? How much control would we even want?

One might say this is simply the process of growth, a good thing. But growth, for all its necessary positive flow, also presents a problem. Most likely, whatever is the position of growth we're so proud of today will be discarded as deluded nonsense tomorrow. Ideas becomes obsolete, feelings mature out of usefulness, and self-hiding philosophies get exposed as the self-limiting constructs they are. The notions we tell ourselves today of what constitutes elevated plateaus of growth will certainty change as the fog of not knowing lifts from our horizons in time. Our own history shows this quite well. So why bother attaching ourselves to such things today? Why attach ourselves to the idea of growth as a current destination of accomplishment at all? Why attach to anything? After all, "you can't take it with you when you go" and whatever you thought it was when you go won't be the same as when you first thought it. Even our cherished memories get the once over, for sure by our evolving memory of memories, and possibly on the counselor's couch. Our deep emotions, once sacred values, strong beliefs, well-reasoned assumptions and premises, hallowed dogmas -- all or any of these might need to fall by the wayside as we're instructed to "let it go, let it go."

If things from the past bother us, we struggle to "let it go." Why is this process of letting go so excruciating? Perhaps because, in the moment when those things happened in the past, those things were the stuff of our very lives, there was nothing closer, dearer to us, nothing else but that and the past before that. Now we are told to let those life moments go, just as back then we should have let the moments prior to that go too. None of it serves us now. The only thing that is valuable is what serves us in the present. But in this "now" the same thing is happening as happened in the past (the now that was then) -- for everything past was once some other "now." Any now, including the now we're experiencing now, immediately becomes the past. Maybe we resist "letting go" because hidden within any movement toward such a thing is an existential secret we already know. The secret whispers to us that someday we will have to let go of life itself and this either terrifies us or saddens us with the loss of the ultimate precious thing - ourselves.

Mostly we hear about the letting go of the past that doesn't serve us now. But what if the past does serve us somehow? How could it? Who knows? If nothing else, maybe at least as an aid to navigation. Of course, it's most likely we'll only concentrate on letting go of the negative, the bad things in our past. We hardly ever, if never, let go of the things we see as the positives, the good things that transpired before - even though, over time, even that assessment is likely to change, if for no other reason than they fade. Somehow we have been told, or would like to believe, that it is possible only to rub out the bad parts of the past but retain the good. And yet why do we call some things in that past "good." Isn't it because we contrast them with the bad? And wouldn't keeping only the good in turn remind us of the gaps we've engineered into our memory, the missing material we don't want to think about but in a reverse logic kind of way, ensure we will remember every time we think of the good we kept?

It's as if we believe we can keep in our pocket only the heads side of a coin for the tails side doesn't serve us anymore. It's as if we can split the dualism which calls one thing good and another bad. We want to use one of them without that use provoking thought of the other. Or maybe we can try keeping both good and bad from the past but re-frame our perspective on the bad to temper it into something more manageable, something more palatable. It's as if we think we can carry around a coin with a tails side three sizes smaller than the heads side. Or perhaps we can engineer a coin with both sides heads, in which case everything was good, no matter which way you look at it, because everything was a lesson, everything was our destiny, everything was necessary on the fateful road to a necessary now that contains some mysterious design as yet unfathomable to us even though the concept of it is used to justify so many of our positions. All of that seems a matter of faith, not of knowing. And that's quite a concept to carry into the future, for then everything you encounter, no matter how horrific, upsetting, or catastrophic from now on has to be looked at -- and felt to be -- good for you because it's necessary if you want to arrive in the fateful future aligned with life's design. Manage that and you don't need any therapy to let things go. You can retain everything in memory just as it was and is, for everything is good. If you can manage that, then it also follows that your day only contains light and your psyche doesn't contain a shadow.

We are told to make now the most important aspect of life, even though there is a good argument to suggest that the "now" is nothing but a demarcation line noting the infinitesimal point where future becomes past. How can one live on that demarcation line and believe the future and the past are not as least equally important? Far from the now being of primary importance, it's hard to shake the feeling that we live in three, overlapping life time zones all at once - present, past, and future. The conjunction of these constitutes life. We can't escape any of the three, we can only make valiant attempts to re-engineer our relationships to them. We are constantly negotiating ourselves across time. So the counselor is asked, "Why should anyone take in and attach ourselves to your techniques and methodologies? After all, they're just the current crop of techniques. And as we know, schools of thought change and many of the presumptions and techniques used by psychology in the past are now looked down upon as misguided voodoo and banished to the intellectual landfill."

Time makes all attachments difficult and confusing and the more emotion we assign to them, the more difficulty and confusion ensues. Perhaps this is because time changes value and meaning and something vital in us rebels from accepting this process as true. In many cases, we don't want it to be true. We want to believe that some things meant something and will always mean something to us. But does our experience bear this out as true? Are any such absolutes evident or even possible in our lives? How about your word is your bond, absolutely? How about best friends can rely on each other, absolutely? How about loving someone in a way the other person intimately trusts that love, absolutely? How about allegiance to a cause that's unwavering, absolutely? Are these not bright goals we yearn for in life and cherish when attained? What would life be like if we truly believed none of these were possible? Who wants to look only to discover this is true?

According to current health professionals and some world religions, time should lower value - to nothing - for nothing lasts. Only letting go persists. Some say only love lasts but love is a word with the accumulated baggage of many definitions and uses assigned to it, not all of them noble. We already know how last month's lover got removed from speed dial when attachment was mistaken for love. It's difficult to claim we can trust our notions of love. And what happens if we get too attached to the loftier, more ideal notions of love? Love itself might become an attachment that doesn't serve us well in a world of duality and things not being what they seem, with motivations of people not often or even usually evident. Are we willing to admit this to ourselves and let go of our notions of love?

Desire leads to attachment and attachment to desire (to retain, to have more) and illusion (that the attachment fulfills, that it will last) which are the primary ingredients in suffering. And the process of letting go, as dictated by the inherent nature of dualism, necessitates we let go over time of the good as well as the bad. The roses you got on your anniversary, while lovely and it seems given with heartfelt sentiment, soon become dust. They may remain only in your memory as beautiful flowers, or it's equally possible that time and new, disturbing revelations may change your perspective such that you are brought to a place to see those flowers only as a manipulative device of someone you once thought was a lover but turned out to be a selfish user. What you thought was the love you had was in fact only fool's gold. It appeared shiny and you carried it around and felt good that possessing it enriched you. But no enrichment was actually occurring, the intimate interest you thought to be accruing never there. Those feelings you ascribed to it were not real, not really, for when the fool's gold is found out for what it is, the value and meaning of everything you assigned to it suddenly changes. You realize you never really had gold in your pocket. That shininess deceived. You realize you never could have exchange fool's good for true intimacy and loving connection. What you got in exchange was only what fool's gold could buy, the hollow simulations and one-way manipulations of someone with a far different agenda than yours.

Time makes us question if anything is worth the pain of hanging onto something at all. And even if we believe that "letting go" is the proper thing to do, the devil is in the details of just when is it right and appropriate to "let go." Take grief for example. How much grief is too much grief? A relative dies - do you grieve for a week, a month, a year, a decade? Who's to say where the proper dividing line is between concern and pathology? Who's to say that the one who grieves for only a week is a healthy human or heartless animal? Who decides if the one who grieves for two years needs serious medication or is a deeply sensitive empath? Are all people the same? Should everyone's rate of grieving be dictated down to the day by the DSM-V? And if some expert says six months is long enough, then what should be done with the person at six months and one day? Are they to be labeled pathological but the person at one day before six months is a healthy member of society? What a difference a day makes.

Your Best Friend Forever betrays you in a most horrible way. Does it make a difference if this happened yesterday or forty years ago? Is your sadness and hurt over this reasonably expected if this was yesterday but shouldn't exist if long ago? When along the continuum between forty years ago and yesterday does it become reasonable to "let that go?" If this happened a year ago does the timing make it less hurtful than yesterday? Is a year better because "time heals all wounds" as they say. But scar tissue hurts too, especially if its located in a place you have to move around and use everyday - such as your emotional body. Some say forgiveness releases you from sadness and hurt. And yet successful forgiveness doesn't mean that circumstances haven't changed and consequences aren't in place. Psychologists claim it is perfectly healthy to say you've forgiven someone but also exclude them from your life going forward. They are forgiven yet suffer the consequences anyway. How long should a person banish another person for this reason despite the forgiveness? How long is healthy?

Shouldn't there come a time when the act of forgiveness extends to letting this person back into your life? It would seem if there's an act of exclusion going on, there's a cause for it, something negative still in place which triggers it. If you've forgiven the cause, then what motivates the banishment? Perhaps one is hating the sin but loving the sinner. Perhaps by exclusion one can still love the person while excluding all of their behavior from one's life. Separating a person's behavior from the person who is responsible for it, then saying you're only punishing the behavior - that sounds like mental gymnastics to fabricate a sophisticated way of punishing the person with one's own plausible deniability of extracting vengeance. Or maybe it's a clever way of giving dispensation to oneself for getting involved with this person in the first place -- it's better if you only made a mistake judging the behavior, but no mistake judging the person. That's not so bad and the worst part of self-shaming can abate or be avoided. But why go through all of these machinations? Why not just let go of all bother and punishment and exclusion regarding this person? Why not just let it go? Let it go! All of it.

It's not so easy for the heart and mind to come to a consensus on the proper rate of letting go. For instance, you discover your mate/significant other has had sex with someone else. When is it proper and right and non-pathological not to be bothered by this? If the act was years ago, the healthy thing of course is to feel there is no bother. But what if this occurred one year ago, one month ago, one week ago? What if you consider this significant other a "soulmate" across time? When is the dividing line between horrific pain and bother and it's no big deal so "let it go?" Does the meaning of something change solely on the fact it's in the past and you can't do anything about it? Regardless of the timescale you choose, what exactly has changed in the intervening time? The act's the same regardless if it was last week or last year. Even if it occurred many years ago, does this fact alone take all import out of it? Does the act only matter in reference to some infraction of marital contract or verbal promise or oath one gave to one another? Does this mean the act has no intrinsic value in itself? You're only supposed to relate to this in context of oaths and contracts? If so, one might wonder why such an oath or contract would even be desirable or necessary if the act didn't have it's own intrinsic value. What's the point of contracts and oaths to legislate sexual exclusivity anyway? Does this suggest people value something about this? What exactly is being valued, and why? What is it about exclusivity of an act meant to be intimate that seems to carry such charged import at any time it's referenced? Does time alone change its meaning and value? What attachment should be assign to this - and when?

What if you were surprised by watching a video showing this sex act between your mate and someone else. After watching you're told the video was captured long ago. Would the timing of when the video was made suddenly make it easier or harder for you to have watched it? If you're healthy, shouldn't you be able to watch such a thing without being triggered in any way? Why? Because it was long ago? But what if you're told the video was made a year ago? What about a week ago? How about yesterday? Which time-frame could the video come from and you would be able to watch it without experiencing negative effects on your emotions? Perhaps it wouldn't be hard to watch in the slightest. It might not matter to you. Perhaps you'd be able to watch it from any time-frame since your sense of meaning and value assigned to the act itself is well aligned with you being unaffected. Maybe you have always felt the concept of "soulmate" is nothing but foolish romanticism. In order for you to be bothered, regardless if an oath or contract existed or not, the act would have to reach a more immediate and graphic level, such as you walking in unannounced and witnessing the act in person, live. But why should the act, in the now, suddenly trigger the person who's unaffected by all the other time-frame videos? Shouldn't you be able to watch such a thing live and not be bothered too? If you're poly-amorous, possibly, but even people in free love communities form individual attachments over time and these attachments have been known to cause strife. It's all too confusing. It's much simpler if we just "let it go."

And yet the question still hangs out there - who gets to be the arbiter of these dividing lines? Some say the dividing line is when your reaction negatively affects your life. That's a sign you're not coping well or have an issue that needs attention. But the same question returns - who gets to decide when your reaction is negatively affecting your life too much? "Too much" is a judgment call, not an absolute. Should spending "too much" time alone signal a treatable negative effect? Should losing interest in old past-times? Should exhibiting a more melancholy mood? What are the signs of this negative effect that's over-the-top? When do any of these reach the critical marker that signals a need for intervention? How do we know these effects aren't simply the ways different individuals go about processing the chaos of having their life thrown in disarray by events out of their control? Who's to judge that one person's coping style is incorrect because it doesn't conform to a generalized standard?

We don't seem to know why, for many people, some things maintain value and meaning across time even though time doesn't agree with us. In spite of this, sooner or later, time steadily brings us in line with how it treats all of our attachments. To avoid pining away over this, should we chalk it up simply to the fact that we haven't yet learned to "let it go?" Whether we learn how to do this or not, letting go catches up with all of us someday. Regardless of our relationship with meaning and value and time, the opposing drives of hang-on and let-go form a dualistic tension within us, fraught with paradoxes that are as much emotional as intellectual. Often times, in the struggle to make sense of this, mind and emotion don't agree. So, what then? Should we seek professional help? Would this put us in a place any better?

Are we to believe the methods and recommendations of psychological and religious experts and streetwise interpreters? Might not their suggestions also be looked upon as wrong or incomplete, woefully misunderstanding or clueless and dangerous in the future just like any concept could? In fact this is likely, given history which shows continual evolution away from old concepts as new schools of thought forever turnover old certainties in favor of whatever predominate current wisdom is popular in the all-important "now."

Of course, this current wisdom, being in the now, which will soon be the past, is a wisdom that is ever-receding. All of it is ripe to be replaced sooner or later. It's quite possible that in our future we'll let go of methods so popular today. If so, then why bother attaching ourselves to any of them now? Is it merely grasping at straws? Shouldn't whatever the counselor tells you also fall into the realm of take-it-with-a-grain-of-salt then "let it go?" Like Buddha buddies enlightened by current psychiatric wisdom, if we're asked why we reject all answers, all methods, we can simply proclaim our action as proof we're healthy. We're so healthy, we're now locked-in and abide with a new popular mantra - We're Attached to Letting Go!  And yes, someday we will come to our senses and let go of this mantra too. It's only healthy, you know.