Why Not Letting Go Will Kill You

When I was 8, my grandparents got me my first puppy — I called him Lassie, yes after the famous show dog. While my Lassie didn’t look anything like the one I saw on TV, he was mine. 

I’m a single child, and my parents were at work all the time throughout my school years. So most of my childhood was spent with my late grandparents. And they did everything in their power to make sure I wasn’t never lonely. 

So finally, Lassie was introduced into my life. There was an instant connection between us and just like in the TV show, I would come home from school every day and Lassie would run to greet me at the front door. We would roll around on the floor and play fetch. Lassie wasn’t officially trained but somehow he was very well behaved in the house.

His final breath was in my arms

Then one day, the inevitable happened. 10 years later, Lassie, my first best friend, my companion, my comfort took his last breath. 

Lassie had been getting weaker and ill for a while, but he was a fighter. He would still try to play with me, but his body was weak. I remember clearly, I could see it in his eyes — as if he knew his time was up.

But I wasn’t ready. Even though I knew he would die soon, I didn’t want to accept the reality of life. It wasn’t fair. How could God take away something to close to me so quickly. He was mine to keep. He was my baby.

As life would have it, I came back from school one day, opened the front door and nothing happened. Lassie did not run towards me. He was laying in his bed in the corner of the room… staring at me. 

I know he wanted to run up to me, but he was weak. I could see the pain and anguish in his eyes. The same eyes that was filled with so much excitement and energy when he was a puppy was now overcome by his final moments.

This time, I picked myself up and ran over to Lassie and held him in my arms. I cried. I cried a lot. I knew this was it. It was going to happen any minute. There was nothing else I could have done. He was leaving me. My best friend for 10 years is saying his final goodbyes.

It just happened…

And then it happened. Lassie took his last breath and it was over. 

Now that I’m 42, I still think about Lassie. My time with Lassie helped define my childhood. 

Lassie’s death affected me for months. It felt like the end of my world. The memories of my time with Lassie kept replaying in my head. And now that’s gone, it felt that a part of my world had disappear.

I was a child with childlike mentality then, and nobody taught me the importance of letting go.

Letting Go Is Hard To Do

Yes, it takes a strong mind and will to let go of things of past. You must be willing to shed your baggage, especially when you harbor negativity from your past.

The right question to ask yourself is…

Does holding on to your past will make anything better for you today, tomorrow, next week/month/year?

You imprison yourself in the past

Everyone of us have different things we hold to from the past. Whether is was a past relationship, a grudge against someone who wronged us, betrayal from family and friends, or anything else. 

When you get an opportunity to let go, I have learnt that, if you don’t take the chance, you will expand the walls of your proverbial prison.

The longer you hold on to something from your past, the larger your prison gets and the harder it is for you to escape. Eventually, you begin to think the prison is where your mind, body and soul should be. 

People around you get affected by your self-indulgence

When you lament in your past, you are doing a lot of damage to the people around you than you realize.

You start to indulge yourself in negative actions, thoughts, and your perception of reality gets distorted.

Nobody deserves being treated poorly just because you are not able to shed your past. 

We all know someone who brings up their past in conversations. And as things gets heated, they start to cast blame and point fingers at everyone except themselves. 

It’s as if they enjoy their past so much that they forget there’s still tomorrow.

You won’t be available to receive your next blessing

As humans, we have finite capacity. I hear people talk about wanting blessings but they never seem to receive it.

Why? If you’ll indulge me.

When you’re burdened with your past, and continue to indulge it in, you start to limit new and better things in your life.

Your so caught up in what could have, should have been, that you are blinded to what is and can be.

Until you are ready to clear out your past, you wouldn’t see your next blessing if it was staring you in the face.

You become an expert in justification 

The only reason your past make sense, to yourself, is by justifying it. 

You start to come up with every reason under the sun of why things happened, how you were treated unfairly, and how the universe had a target on your back.

The worst part is you start to conjure up, in your mind, why things happen to you. And over time, it becomes your reality and you become an expert in justifying all your thoughts and actions.

It’s Time to Let Go

We are all works-in-progress. No one is perfect.

The most important thing is to keep learning, growing, and evolving every day.

You probably won’t let go of your past because it might have meant something to you or has affected you. Like Lassie for me, for a while.

But unless we let go of the things that has a negative impact on us, we will never live life to its fullest. To me, it is very straight forward. I can either be consumed by things I have no ability to change, or focus my energy on the present and future that I have the ability to affect.