Love and Let Go

The idea for this blog came to me in one of my moments of perfect clarity and understanding. Some would call this an epiphany or a eureka moment. But I can't claim either of those true because this blog includes questions I have been pondering for a very long time. I think I finally just asked myself the right questions. This wasn't a confluence of ideal circumstances combining to create a perfect storm of perfect thought. It was more like, "duh".

People need two things. One is to be able to love and be loved; the other is to be capable of loving and letting go at the same time. These two understandings will free people from all of their fears and doubts when it comes to other human beings. We are all built of the same basic physical needs. Beyond those are the basic physical, emotional and psychic needs all of which don't change, border to border. At the core of humanity is a capacity largely ignored in the tribal drive to survive.

Loving and Letting go.

Interactions with other humans are investments.

Emotional Investment - Having an emotional investment in someone is like investing in a "sure thing". To me if you make the decision to love someone or hate someone all of the pressure is off. No matter what they do all you have to do is what you do towards them anyway, love or hate. It is the biggest and best complete cop-out in human relationships. That's why the ancients ascribed these extremes to the gods. Whether or not they knew it simply saying, "it's a love, hate thing" took all of the pressure off.

I can be in love. I like love. Love is easy, people give you reasons to love them when they are not giving you reasons to hate them. Humans are silly, quirky, funny little creatures with many things worth loving. Only the absolutely least likeable of them are well worth losing. Investing in them emotionally is immensely satisfying.

Personal Investment - Having a personal investment in someone is like attempting to graft an extra arm onto your body and then training it to wield a weapon of war. Making a personal investment is a much more difficult thing to do and it is capable of sneaking up on you. A personal investment is two fold:

• Your personal investment in the person and their personal shit.
• Your self investment and how their shit affects you personally, (what I call the 'blowback effect')

I can invest in a person, any person, personally. There are times though when one person's personal shit is just way beyond my skill set. I am not possessed of the monumental hubris required to believe that I could even begin to deal with other peoples personal shit. My personal shit is so backed up it would take more than a few happy endings to work them out. So, out of a necessity we simply do not overly invest in other peoples personal shit too deeply. Most of this is because we are too often deeply involved in our own personal shit and we can't help but spread it on those around us.

The question remains, How much do you invest in your self while also investing in another person? To some degree in every personal investment in a person you are going to neglect some of the time it takes to invest in yourself, personally. Often, the person you are investing in carries such a heavy load we feel compelled to help them carry it especially if we love then but not less often even if we hate them. This also clouds and affects our own time and capacity to properly invest in ourselves.

This brings us to learning how to let go. Letting go is a necessity in life. Learning how to do so is very difficult. Our society does not prepare us for the inevitability that one day you are going to have to let go of something you have an attachment to. Once a thing is gone and you know you cannot get it back you might still harbor a deep emotional connection to this object. This connection alters how you view the world and how you behave within it whether you realize it or not. It is a burden you are choosing to carry. You can let it go.

This logic also pertains to people. There are healthy attachments to people that you've had to let go. The death of a beloved family member or friend who is beyond your reach can be great for bolstering who you are as a person. But knowing that you will never see them again is a true sign that you should let them go. An inability to grieve and let go can be detrimental to your over all well being. The same stands true for a lost love or a grudge held against an enemy. You must grieve, process and then let go. Holding on to these problems only makes you walk the world in a fog wearing a veil unable to truly see what's right in front of you and truly unable to enjoy the moments that make up your life.

Learn to let go of even the most difficult things and at the most difficult times and then you can walk the world, in the moment, with clarity and an increased capacity for love.