Letting Go Is the Beginning of Everything

Last updated on: May 30, 2015 at 9:46 am by Annie Mueller

Letting Go Is the Beginning of Everything 2015-05-30T09:46:43-05:00 Annie Mueller

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Accomplishment is often how we derive our value, our identity. To accomplish, we have to hold on. We use a lot of other phrases to say hold on, though. They sound better to us. They sound wise, discerning. Phrases like these:

Define your goals
Sharpen your saw
Clarify your vision
Guard your time
Maintain your skills
Set your standards
Protect your resources
Establish your boundaries.

What we’re really saying, though, is “Don’t let go! Grasp it tighter! Hang on to what matters! If you don’t… you’ll lose it.”

We use vision (visualize, mind mapping, clarify) and we use tangibility (prototypes, inventory) and we use improvement (training, expertise) as ways to make things seem closer, better, held tighter to us. Safer.

A Buddhist Bible: Chapter VII, Self-Realisation

…so long as these discriminations are cherished by the ignorant and simple-minded they go on attaching themselves to them and, like the silkworm, go on spinning their thread of discrimination and enwrapping themselves and others, and are charmed with their prison. But to the wise there are no signs of attachment nor of detachment; all things are seen as abiding in solitude where there is no evolving of discrimination.

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But we know, if we are brave enough to admit it, that our accomplishments aren’t the definition of our value, of our selves.

Life has its own value built-in; we demonstrate our belief in this value every time we care for a sick animal or a newborn human, every time we help any cause or being that doesn’t directly benefit us.

World English Bible, Mark 8:34-37

He called the multitude to himself with his disciples, and said to them, “Whoever wants to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.

For whoever wants to save his life will lose it; and whoever will lose his life for my sake and the sake of the Good News will save it.

For what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world, and forfeit his life?

For what will a man give in exchange for his life?

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Holding on doesn’t guarantee accomplishment, anyway. It’s when we release the old that we have room for the new. You end high school to start college. You sell the old car to have money for the new one. You leave single life to begin a committed relationship.

When we insist on hanging on (because we’re addicted to accomplishment), we actually limit our ability to accomplish more, to reach greater goals. This is true spiritually as well as practically.

From Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore

I thought that my voyage had come to its end at the last limit of my power,

—that the path before me was closed, that provisions were exhausted and the time come to take shelter in a silent obscurity.

But I find that thy will knows no end in me.

And when old words die out on the tongue, new melodies break forth from the heart; and where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders.

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What are you holding on to? What are you grasping as your key to accomplishment? Maybe it’s time to let go.