Honesty Hour: It's Time to Let Go » Living Life with Meredith

I read this quote recently by Rupi Kaur that says,

“you have to stop
searching for why at some point
you have to leave it alone”

There are so many things in my life that has happened over the last few months and up to a year or so, even longer than that, where I just want to know why. I want to understand. I want to understand why something happened or didn’t happen.

I’m very much an “I need an answer” person.

Philosophy never had a shot at being my major in college. I often think in black and white about things and am having to work on noticing when I do that and then look for the gray areas.

Anyway…that quote hits home.

It’s time to let go but I need answers.

Sometimes, constantly looking for the answers can leave you in the dark. You let the lack of answers hold you back. You let the circumstances that led you to ask the questions leave you in pitch black holding you back from growing and moving forward.

You think the answers will hand you a flashlight and allow you to move right into the light and in the light everything will make perfect sense and it’ll be all sunshine and rainbows.

And maybe it will. I’ll be the first to admit that getting answers to all of your questions sounds pretty great. But those answers could also raise many more questions that sends you right back to the dark searching.

It’s life so I think if we’re always searching for answers to every single little question then we may never get to the light.

Life also means that we do not get all of the answers to our questions. Some things you’ll just never really know why that happened or didn’t happen or why that person behaved that way or didn’t behave that way.

So what do you do?

You have to let it go.

You have to stop searching constantly for the answer that you think will be the flashlight to help you get out of the labyrinth.

Easier said than done, I know.

I’m Pretty Sure I’m Over It & Moved On, Thanks.

I’m the type of person that can be angry about something for a while but there comes a point where I’m just tired of being angry about it. I can’t hold onto it forever and let it weigh me down. So I stop being angry & I move on.

Well, I let the anger go, become apathetic about it 90% of the time, but we all know that the situation I’m angry about is still sitting there in my subconscious keeping me in the dark ready to jump back to the forefront making me wonder why that happened.

And I bet a lot of you are like that too.

I mean, who else thinks they’ve moved on from something and you’ve let it go and then something random happens and that situation & that anger just pops right back up just as fresh as if it happened yesterday? There may even be a small part of you that wonders if it’s secretly holding you back even though you think you’ve let it go and it’s not affecting you.

Yeah…I get it. Been there. Done that. Bought the t-shirt.

So, what do you do? How do you actually let it go?

This is different for everybody but I’ll tell you what I did:

I Wrote a Letter.

You read that right. I wrote a letter. To that person/situation. I just let my stream of conscious flow and wrote whatever popped into my mind the last time I got angry all over again at what happened and what this person did. I wrote all of the things that I wish I had the guts to say to that person.

Here’s the catch: I have no intentions of ever saying those things to that person. I also have zero intentions of ever mailing that letter.

Zero. Nada. Zilch.

That’s the beauty of writing a letter that you’re never gonna send. You can say all the things you want to say-as mean or ugly or angry as you want. They’ll never know. You can get it all off your chest: all those things you want to say but know better than to say. Yeah, just write those things down. Get it off your chest & out of your mind.

I should say here that this didn’t happen a week after the situation. I wrote this letter over three months after the incident took place. There’s another letter I plan on writing that will be several years after the fact. Getting to the point to where you can genuinely write the letter to let it off your chest and let go will take time but you also need to know when it’s time to write the letter. Or at least when it’s time to give it a try.

I’m willing to bet that you may be able to find some peace & degree of letting go after you write the letter.

I did.

I’m no longer allowing that person and their actions to affect me.

It’s over and done. I forgive that person for what they did though I will most likely never understand why they did it. And that’s okay. I don’t need to know. That doesn’t concern me anymore. You know that saying “Not my circus. Not my monkeys.” It’s something along those lines. Though it is my circus, that act and those monkeys are off my stage. They don’t get airtime anymore and they don’t get to hold me hostage.

It’s Time to Let Go

It’s time to write the letter. It’s time to let go. Constantly searching for the answers, for the point to whatever it is you’re going through, it’s just gonna leave you in the dark. You deserve to live and be in the light. And in the light, we find our own peace and closure with or without the answers we want because sometimes, there are no answers that you can find. And even if you did, you may not be happy with them or they may send you on an even further wild goose chase.

So, write the letter (or whatever your method of letting go is). It’s time to stop searching. You have to leave it alone. It’s time to stop thinking you’re good & you’ve let it go when you know that probably isn’t true.

It’s time to let go.

Love,