A Ghostly Grip: When It's Hardest to Let Go

Letting go of someone you love, dead or alive; of a career that wasn't meant to be; of deep-rooted bitterness and past hurt.

Catch and release.

Inhale, exhale.

Fist to palm.

Whether tangible or conceptual, these things are all palpable. Letting go of people, jobs, emotions, and the like takes as much courage as holding on. Often more. We may or may not be able to touch these things with our hands or even see them with our eyes, but that doesn't make them any less real.

But there's another pair of eyes in this room of surrender. A quiet elephant no one really talks about. Any sort of relinquishment takes courage, but some things are more difficult to part with for the simple reason that they're not really there. Meaning no one can see the ghostly fingers wrapped around your wrist. Maybe not even you.

Often it's hardest to let go of what doesn't exist.

[Imaginary chums are not what I'm getting at here. If you're still sitting down to chat with them, you might have some other issues to work through, my friend.]

...

Often it's hardest to let go of perfect.

"Good enough

Never good enough.

Perfect, you're my poison

I sip on you to wash down the shame

And though I am hungover in the morning

Facedown in the carpet I feel safe.

I think you're overthinking about underachieving And so you're sinking right down through the floor The demons, they've been creeping in your head while sleeping They're always keeping you from feeling more like yourself."

~ Wander. Wonder., The Arcadian Wild

Frankly, the people we've told ourselves we'd be and the future we've dreamed of---the tomorrows and decades to follow---don't exist. Elements of our wannabe personas and idyllic conjectures may become reality, but it's unlikely that most details will pan out the way we hope. And yet it can be incredibly difficult to abdicate "if only," surrendering both the guilt surrounding our failure to measure up and the frustration with "delinquencies" external to ourselves.

The manifestations of "if only" are endless. So what does it look like to:

• Let go of the person that the starry-eyed child of your past imagined you'd be now.

• Give up the list of circumstances you've come to believe will one day ignite that ember of fulfillment.

• Reject the notion that you can somehow perform flawlessly---as a co-worker, as a neighbor, as a friend, a spouse, a parent, a child, a Christian, as a freaking HUMAN BEING.

• Release the "idea" of someone, whether that's a hypothetical human or a living, breathing life whose reality may not actually fit into the idealistic box you've created.

• Liberate your soul from its deep-down ache to be "good enough."

So what does it look like? The unabashed answer: I don't know. This elusive kind of release looks different for everyone. From the outside it may not look like anything at all. As Corrie ten Boom once put it, "How often it is a small, almost unconscious event that makes a turning point."

Although there's a sense in which it's right that we should yearn for perfection, earth-side, nothing is. Not at this mile-marker in history. There was. Once. And He'll be back.

That's the truly unabashed answer:

To let go of "perfect," we must accept Perfect.

More and more I've realized how much it's an exchange. How much any kind of positive growth's an exchange. You can't let go without something else to grasp once its predecessor's gone.

...

So stained glass (there's a connection, I promise). Despite the resemblance, this not a retro church window housed in a dark-paneled chapel with dated 70's upholstery. It's more of an image, with an unusual projector: tilt it towards the window and squint through its eyepiece. Each design puts on display a new image more distinctive than the last. This antique kaleidoscope fascinated me to no end as a kid with its interchangeable stained glass plates of jagged, piecemeal shards.

By its very nature, it distorts reality, putting on a show filled with symmetrically "perfect" pictures of what doesn't exist. Because that's all a kaleidoscope really is:

A bunch of broken pieces reflecting light, together making something beautiful.

Maybe letting go of "perfect" becomes a little less painful when we realize that imperfect, although not yet what it should be, is anything but worthless.

"For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God." ~ 1 Corinthians 1:26-29