Let it go; an exploration
Letting go is the hard. In death. In separation. In disconnection.
If you love something let it go
This is not a mantra. It is an acceptance that at some point you will have to let everything that you love go. Even if this is upon one’s own death. To know that all things will be OK without you.
The last time I saw my grandmother she was dying of cancer, and she asked me, “Is it OK that I am leaving?”. The last book she ever read was The God Delusion which I had lent to her with the proviso that I didn’t think it was actually that great. “He’s a better scientist than philosopher”. And so her fear was not of death itself, but that she had “things she still needed to do”; things undone or unsaid. Most importantly that there were people who needed her still. The thing I gave in return, an easy truth, “You have done everything and given everything that you needed. We will be OK without you”.
She died three weeks later while I slept in a cheap Bangkok hotel waiting on a flight to Korea.
When I arrived in Seoul I was told she had passed. It was strange because it felt like I already knew. At the very least I had already accepted her death, and that I would never see her again. The hard part was not being there for her funeral, which as requested was a joyous and colorful celebration of her life and the love she had brought to so many. It wasn’t that that I felt any guilt from her, but I still feel small pains of regret not being there for my family; my mother especially, for whom it wasn’t so easy letting her go.
For my grandmother I see her acceptance of death as inspiration for how one can live. It wasn’t that it was easy for her. She was in pain for many months. It was also not without regret. For a year she had been planning on going to France; her house covered in colorful post-it-notes, “ustensiles” and “toilette” and “des lunettes”, and she never made it. She also had four young grandchildren, all girls, who I know she would have loved to see grow into the strong women they are.
But she did accept it still. She could acknowledge that life continues when she closed her eyes. When she no longer existed her life would still matter and the work she had done throughout her life would still continue.
That time would continue flowing without her.
For a long time I could never answer the simple question, “What is your favourite movie?”. The act of picking favourite media in general I find hard but at some point I realised that I kept coming back to and choosing to watch The Fifth Element. It’s not that it has something special to say about life, or deep perceptions of the universe. It’s just a super fun and visually fantastic romp, which I can enjoy over and over again. Like a great song I guess?
The last time I saw it, actually the first time seeing it at the cinema, I’d started writing the above passages. Near the start of the film a Mondoshawan says, just before getting crushed , “Time not important. Only life important”. And it stuck with me. Not because I thought this was some deep philosophical insight, but because life really isn’t important. You are not important. The only thing that is a constant is time.
If you love something you must be willing to let it go
I’m not religious, nor am I a great study of religions. From the outside at least a lot of what they try to help with seems to be about letting go. For Buddhism and yoga it’s at the core. For the Abrahamic religions it’s expressed as putting trust in a God; that things will work out as they should.
Letting go does not mean that nothing is important, but it allows you to look at yourself from a distance and understand that you create the stories that define what you need. What you need to do, or need to think, or need physically and emotionally to be fulfilled.
As a better study of science, cosmology tells me that I have to let go of the idea of forever, for the universe itself will one day cease to exist as I know it. The heat energy that runs through the expanse will cool down to a point where there is a final stillness.
That time itself will run out of space.
There will never again be something to love. There will be no before. And no after.
Only now.
