When I was younger,
I used to be annoyed seeing people who couldn’t let go. But now, I’ve grown turned into one of those people. Now, even I would hate to let go. I feel that keeping some incidents, certain feelings, special emotions with us helps us enjoy the beauty of nostalgia later in life.
For example, I used to have this close friend but we lost touch and I miss him dearly now. Yet, I doubt if I would want to be friends with him again, because we have changed so much since then. And the memories of the bond we shared are so sweet that I would hate to taint them in a bid to renew the bond. But in the heart of my heart, I know I would love to reconnect.
This means I have failed to let go. I still listen to the music he introduced me to; still reads books which we had shared back in the day and so on. Letting these memories evaporate would mean letting go of a part of ourselves.
Whenever faced with grief,
may be a lost friendship, a relationship or death, we are often advised to ‘move on’, which some others would say is nothing but letting it go. I think it is learning to accept loss yet understand why it happened, and in a way, romanticise it.
So maybe letting go isn’t about forgetting or discarding something or someone. It is about learning to face things differently. The people we’ve loved, the friendships that shaped us, the losses we’ve endured, they don’t need to be pushed into oblivion. They deserve to be held with grace, with quiet love, with understanding.
Letting go, if anything, is about reducing the weight of pain, not the memory. And perhaps the most beautiful part is that we don’t have to fully let go to heal. We just have to learn how to live alongside the echoes of what once was.
By Manasi Khanzode