Looking in and Letting go.

I was looking over my Facebook account today and came across one of my all time favorite quotes.  It states, “He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose”.  I’m not sure of the author, but that quote has always inspired me.  For me, it’s been the secret of letting go.  I came across that quote many years ago as I was going through the divorce from my ex-wife.  That was one of those rough times in my life. I had so many hopes, dreams, and expectations for our future.  But, in looking back, it was just not meant to be.  And, it was in that quote that I found the strength and willingness to let go.

I think the inability to let go is inherent in human nature.  Yet, it’s this very inability that often brings so much unhappiness, sadness, and pain.  Let’s look at our relationships for example.  Say you are in a relationship, it may be for a few months, or several years.  It doesn’t matter.  What matters at the moment is that you are miserable, and you know that if something doesn’t break soon, you are going to break.  Okay, you are miserable, your partner is miserable, but you still struggle with letting go.  It’s sad, but yet one of those things we see and hear about it everyday.

It may be a job, or a career choice that we’ve made.  We find ourselves preparing for this dream job, only to find that it’s not the dream at all, or the dream we’ve imagined it to be.  I’ve known many high level professionals over the years who have spent a considerable amount of their lives preparing for a profession, only to get out and find themselves stuck in muck of bitterness, unhappiness, and unease.

What I’ve come to realize in my own life, it’s not the relationships, or the careers, the people, or things that we have the hardest time in letting go.  It’s the false dreams, hopes, and expectations behind those relationships, careers, people, or things that we find difficult to let go.  I say false, because what I’ve realized is that much of our “story” isn’t our story at all.  It’s a fictitious story that we somehow come to believe and have grown attached to.  It’s a story created by our minds based on false ideas, beliefs, conditioning that are often imposed by others that we come to accept as real.  We come to care more about what other’s think, or being politically correct that we fail to live our own inner truth.  We care more about fitting in,  than we do about looking in.

And, so back to the original quote.  “He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose”.  It’s only through looking inward, knowing, and being able to live our own inner truth, that we can leave behind those things that we can and should not keep, to gain that which we can never lose.  And, that my friends, is you. HB