Letting It Go

It was an absolutely strange feeling to wake up one morning and feel a vacuum. I felt light and at peace. It took me sometime to figure what was different that morning.  I had finally let go. Let go of anger, hurt and bitterness that had been part of my life for some time. I am fundamentally an optimistic person, so these emotions were uncomfortably alien to me. I felt  relieved because I had wanted so much to not harbour negative feelings.  It was ironic because just when I had accepted that these feelings would stay with me for a lifetime, they quietly exited from my life -  without even saying goodbye! After staying rent-free in my head, you would think they would at least give me a fair warning of their departure!

I learnt this. 

• That healing takes its own time. You can’t rush it. You can’t stop the voices in your head or the anger flaring up at the slightest provocation. You can practice chanting, praying, offloading on friends,  black magic, pranic healing  - anything, but it won’ t work. Forgiveness will feel like an overrated virtue. So don’t try too hard to forgive/forget/move on....

• You can counsel people on their lives and experiences, but all objectivity is lost when it is your own life. And the more invested you are emotionally, the more unreasonable you become. It is the ego and the feeling that you let yourself down that rankle the most. You can hold long endless conversations with yourself on the whys of the world and not come to any resolution. 

• It is exhausting to be angry and bitter. For me it had benefits - I worked my anger  on two books - but the pain was brutally physical. I had headaches and somedays, a gloom that refused to lift.The bitterness left a sour taste in my mouth, and acid on my tongue. 

 I didn’t let go though -  the negativity finally disengaged itself from me. In extricating itself from me, the negativity  filled me with a lightness of being. I stopped questioning  the motives of other people or why they had behaved such with me. I no longer looked for an apology - infact I realised there was no need for an apology- people have their own journey that I may not understand but it was no longer of any consequence . I was filled with gratitude for all I had received, and surprisingly retained nothing negative about my experience. I felt only compassion and affection for those I had been angry with and truly wished them well - with no malice. 

If I have any words of advice from my own experience, it is this - trust the universe to make it right for you. Till then, accept the feelings. Be in tune with yourself and don’t be too harsh on your inability to cope, or regressing sometimes or being mean!  

As Mandela said,’ It always seems impossible until it’s done’. Till then - Keep the Faith.