I am learning to let go. It is liberating…

Have you, at some point in your life, found yourself carrying other people’s burdens? Come to think of it, are you carrying those burdens right now? Do other people’s baggage give you sleepless nights or cause your heart to beat a little bit faster, causing your blood pressure to rise?

I ask these questions because I found myself in the midst of an interesting conversation last weekend. The conversation was centered on ‘the art of letting go’, which, in a nutshell, describes how to release attachment to situations you have no control over.

 The conclusion was that there is nothing as liberating as learning this skill, because it allows you to finally come up for air after getting rid of that chokehold. I think I will now speak plainly, lest one of my readers accuses me of talking in parables, like happened two weeks ago.

 The baggage I mentioned up there could be you taking responsibility for how other people react, or even their bad behaviour. Or outbursts. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard this phrase: “Please excuse my husband, (or wife) he’s normally not like this, he’s just having a bad day…” Or, “I’m so sorry you overheard that, my friend didn’t mean it.” Also, how many times do we parents apologise on behalf of our children when they misbehave in public?

But the baggage I’m talking about takes many other forms, not just feeling the need to be the person that keeps the peace even when you’re not the one that disrupted it. I have to ask, have you ever been so invested in a close friend’s ‘drama’ that their drama became yours?

It could be she is in a bad relationship, and being a close friend, you naturally became her sounding board, meaning that you know about every bad or unfair thing that happens to her as soon as it happens, and you listen with outrage, gradually internalising her emotions.

Kidogo, kidogo, as we Kenyans like to say, you become angry on her behalf, your blood pressure spikes on her behalf, and you even begin to hate the person causing her distress on her behalf, never mind that this person never did anything to you.

Closer home, grudges inherited from our parents, grudges that were, for instance, formed with their siblings and other relatives even before we were born, but, because blood is supposed to be thicker than water, we acquire them, having listened to our parents over the years bad-mouth their relatives until we believed they were those things. Or it could be as simple as disliking someone just because a friend dislikes them.

Negative perception

Another form of acquired baggage, and this is common, is allowing other people’s actions to upset you. Most of the time, when people say negative things about us or treat us with disrespect, we allow their actions to affect us. To alter our mood, fill us with rage, even worse, begin to have a negative perception about ourselves. To think we’re the problem, yet, in reality, the instigator is the one with the problem.

Which brings me to why it is important to let go. To detach from all upsetting actions, words (even events) directed at us but which we have no control over. I have to admit here that what I have written above is a work of progress in my life. But I have made significant headway, and each time I veer off the road, I repeat to myself the words that I am writing here.

Nowadays, I try very hard not to take things ‘personally’, to assume that the offending person is just having a bad day, or is just a bad person. With this in mind, since their behaviour is beyond my control, I refrain from placing meaning to it, or wondering what I did to deserve it. Did I preach to someone?

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