Yesterday I undertook to facilitate resolution of a few matters that have proven vexing, and while I’m usually not much for statements like the following (is it an aphorism? A secular homily?), there’s a place for everything.
“Your peace is more important than driving yourself crazy to understand why something happened the way it did. Let it go.”
Ages ago someone told me I was an explainer, which I took as a compliment at the time, but maybe there’s a nested barb or two in there (“mansplaining” being a bad thing these days).
In the end, you can do your level best to explain something by force of cogent arguments, to be accurate about what happened, and to espouse both reality and rationality. However you cannot expect any of it will be heard or well received, or that there’ll be an epiphany in return.
In short, other people are laboring under their own sets of issues and limitations, just like you. THIS is the actual reality of the situation. Truth might sink in later, or not at all, and yet the most profound truth is that one’s best course of action isn’t active at all: just let it go.
Obviously “letting it go” has never been a strength of mine. I’m contentious and competitive when it comes to narratives, especially my own. Granted, what I’ve chosen to do with my life in terms of beer ranks far below a great many pursuits in terms of societal need, but the point is that I’ve had to fight for what I’ve achieved — fight for, as well as against.
I’ve had to create positions and defend them. I’d say the result has been many more valued friends and acquaintances than enemies, for which I’m grateful, but constant engagement in existential struggles has a way of agitating against Zen. Sadly, there will be times when there’s nothing left to say.
And then letting go is all you can do.
So: I achieved what I set out to do, took this to a higher plane where it might have been expanded and embellished even further, but by doing so I inadvertently challenged a fragile status quo of ownership head space that I clearly should have understood better, but didn’t. Then it all became utterly ludicrous, and as I’ve now learned, so it remains delusional … and so it goes.
It’s sad and stupid and unnecessary, but here we are. My peace is more important than driving myself crazy to understand why this happened the way it did, and I need to let it go. I resolve to try my best.
