Letting it go

Let it go.

So easy to say. And so terribly cliche. Yet so very hard to do.

Letting go is really about forgiveness.

While it may never be easy to forgive someone who has wronged you, I’m going to suggest that when you have other needs met in your life, it’s a little easier. When you have a sense of abundance in your life, you can rely on those other people and things to pull you through whatever way you’ve been wronged.

But when you are lacking, when your life is not feeling complete, now there is a test of forgiveness. When you’re sad or alone or broke or depressed or lonely or just plain against the wall and really want or need something from the person who wronged you, that’s the true test of whether you’ve really forgiven them. Of whether you still feel victimized in some way.  Or if what they’ve done to you or how they’ve acted still hurts or makes you angry when everything is going wrong. Or if you still expect something of them, expect them to contribute to your life in some way.

Because only when you have fully forgiven someone for their harmful actions against you, only then will you expect nothing from them. And it is only when you expect nothing of them that will you be free of the hurt and anger.

Frankly, this is no easy achievement. More like peeling away the layers of an onion. Often times we think we’ve let it go and forgiven someone, but when we suddenly find ourselves against the wall, the bitterness rises like bile in our throats.

So how do we let it go? What is the recipe for forgiveness?

I’m not sure there is a clear-cut path. What I am certain of, though, is that it takes a good dose of time to gain acceptance and to let things go.

The other thing that likely needs to happen is that we need to stop expecting the person who hurt us to behave as we would. Or to behave with what we’d consider to be decency or kindness. It’s probably not going to happen, because if it was going to, we probably would have already forgiven, forgotten, and moved on.

And finally, give yourself some credit. It’s hard to let go when you’ve been deeply hurt or when someone is not carrying their load. But eventually we have to find a way to release the anger and hurt, not for the benefit of the one who wronged us, but for ourselves.

Forgiveness is really for ourselves. So that we can let go of the pain and hurt that’s been lingering.

So give it a try. Peel away another layer of the onion. Eventually the onion will be gone and will no longer make us cry.