Some things are part of our life’s baggage, but that doesn’t mean we’re obligated to carry them to the end.
Some experiences teach us something. Some people we’ll always remember. Some decisions transform us. But we also carry burdens so long that we no longer notice they stopped serving any purpose long ago.
We get used to old grudges, to the feeling of guilt, to the need to keep explaining to ourselves why we did something—or why we didn’t. We get used to conversations that ended many years ago but which we still carry on inside ourselves.
Sometimes we return to those conversations before going to sleep. We say what we didn’t say back then. We come up with a response that’s years overdue. We try once again to explain ourselves to someone who may no longer even be thinking about it.
Only then do you realize how much space in a person can be taken up by something that’s no longer there. Sometimes we think letting go means forgetting. It doesn’t. It doesn’t mean justifying what happened, either. Sometimes it just means stopping the daily penalty for something long past.
For years, I thought a person grew stronger by enduring more. That holding on a little longer was a test of strength. That what once hurt us must be turned into something useful.
Today it seems to me that strength has another side: recognizing what’s worth carrying and what we’ve carried long enough. Some things won’t disappear just because we’ve let them go. The memories will remain, as will what we’ve learned from that experience. That doesn’t mean we have to give it the same place in our lives every single day.
We don’t have to turn every hard experience into a defining part of ourselves. We don’t have to spend our lives explaining old decisions, revisiting conversations that are over, or feeling guilty for who we were when we didn’t yet know what we know today.
It’s worth asking ourselves from time to time what we still carry because it matters, and what we keep only because we haven’t yet grown accustomed to living without the weight.
Comments