One day, two Buddhist monks set out on a journey across a deep valley.
While on their travels they came across a shallow but murky and fast-moving river. On the bank stood a beautiful young woman, dressed in the finest silks. She needed to cross to the other side but was afraid, and so asked for their help.
The monks had taken vows to never touch a woman. The younger one glanced at her, said nothing and kept walking. The older one, however, quickly picked up the woman, carried her across the river and gently put her down on the other side.
The two monks continued their journey in silence.
After some time, the younger monk, unable to stay quiet any longer, cried out: “How could you have picked her up like that?! You took vows to never touch a woman!”
“My brother”, the elder monk replied. “I set that woman down hours ago. Why are you still carrying her?”
We’ve all encountered moments in life where we’ve felt ‘wronged’. Situations that haven’t gone how we would’ve liked, unpleasant events that we haven’t been to get out of our heads, people we haven’t wanted to give up.
And while we may know, logically, that ruminating over that event or clinging onto that person isn’t helping us, still we persevere. We refuse to let go. Why?
When you think about it, life is a journey of detachment, beginning when someone cuts your umbilical cord. We detach from our primary carers to go to school, we loose our baby teeth, we leave home to go to university or work… It’s a trade off - we separate and let go in order to experience freedom and growth in life.
But that doesn’t make it easy. And, if impermanence, change and detachment are such an integral part of being human, where does the struggle come from?
Well hello, ancient brain! My very old and sometimes very unhelpful friend…
And as far as I can tell, there are two levels to this.
Level 1: Our ancient, primitive brain wants security and safety and sees any situation in which we might be ‘wrong’ or ‘wronged’ as a threat. The primitive brain always wants to be right; it easily gets scared and likes to cling on tight.
Level 2: Our left-side brain (which is where our understanding of the self and our place in the world, i.e. the ego) backs up and supports this primitive desire to be ‘right’. Layers of emotional and cognitive brain tissue get involved and confirm the importance of our ‘rightness’. And of course the more we think we need to be right, the more developed our neural pathways become, and so on…
However, hopefully, the more we live our lives, the less ‘right’ we feel the need to be. We know better when people are not good for us, we become less stubborn, we gain more perspective (on ourselves, others and situations) that enable us to navigate the world with more ease and more grey-areas of understanding and compromise. We become more mindful, of everything.
This generally requires some practice and repetition, but it’s definitely worth it – we all know people for whom being right is the MOST important thing in the world, they are very happy, yes? In order to let go more often, and become happier in the process, we have to first loosen our grip on what we think of ourselves and our place in the world.
So one of the big questions for all of us to start with is: can you be okay with someone believing that you are totally in the wrong? And then leaving it at that. Not needing to prove your rightness at the expense of everything else. Accepting that some people will think you’re wrong and won’t like you, they may even (shock, horror) think you’re a crappy person. Can you also accept that you’re also allowed to think someone else is crappy, and let them go from your life, without clinging onto guilt…?
FYI, don’t set out to be a crappy person. But I think so much of letting go is accepting that you can’t be right (or wrong) all the time. Then leaning strongly on that Talmudic saying: We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are. The fact is, we view the world through the prism of our experiences, expectations and beliefs. And we all view it very differently, depending on what we want, what we value and who and what we prioritise.
Life is messy, unpredictable, and for the most part, completely outside of our control. We can’t control how other people respond to us, what demands they put on us, or even really how they treat us.
What we can control is how we respond to them, what demands we allow them to put on us, and how we allow them to treat us. You are the gatekeeper of your mind, and all that.
As to the Zen fable at the beginning: when you hold onto things that don’t serve you, you are only burdening yourself. So, what can you let go of today? Few ideas below:
• Being around stressful situations or people
• Unproductive or excessive demands on your time and energy
• Distractions
• Unhealthy lifestyle habits
• Anything or anyone that diminishes your confidence and self-esteem
• Situations over which you have no control
• Past failures / fear of failure
• Tasks that could be easily delegated
• Sabotaging/limiting beliefs and behaviours
• Blame and excuses
• Fear inducing information
Share something you’d like to let go of below, I’d love to hear.
PS. I’m back at the London EDITION hotel for the first in a 2023 series of mindset talks all around priorities, values and building a happier, healthier mind. Join myself and Royal Ballet principal dancer Steven McRae as we explore Building Mental Resilience. Tickets here.
Oh my Lily, I have read this so many times and cry each time given its relevance to me. I need to hug you tightly so much for writing this which just absolutely helps me so much. Funny how a simple email can really affect someone? This has absolutely rocked my "soul" and I am still needing to re read it, digest it and accept its content. Wow! Fecking amazing 100% Thank you so much, Rachel xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
You seem to always write about what’s on my mind at the time, that’s crazy!
I currently struggle letting go of the fact that the people I live with have different views on how much we should heat the house. I’d like to heat less to save costs but they find it too cold, yet the bill is split in half which seems unfair to me and I’m currently very much struggling to let go of this.