In life we are guaranteed one thing and that is we are, at some stage, going to part from someone. This parting of ways could be through death, end of a relationship, separation, or just simply losing contact. No matter what the cause there is always a plethora of emotions that we will go through following. Hatred, rage, anger, guilt, sadness, happiness and regret are just some that we will feel. The emotions may last a while, they may last forever but as we get older we learn to let go.
Today has been a strange day. It has been one of those days where I have jut ignored the circus of life that surrounds me and have been thinking about the past, of the people that are no longer in my life for some meaning.
Sometimes these people pop into my head for a purpose or a reason, it could be jogged by a memory of something or recollection. Throughout the day I have thought of these people and relived the good times as well as the bad and the emerging pattern was that most of them I held some kind of hatred towards, mainly in the way that they left my life. It seemed tainted with a sudden departure following a rather bad time, a period of happiness followed by a sudden impact of pain.
This pain was not something that I had created but it just happened. Yet to them, wherever they are, the pain is probably just an insignificant memory, yet to me it became something like an addictive volcano, the more I thought about it the stronger and more powerful it became. Do I dwell on the past too much? Yes quite possibly.
Today as I ignored the people around me I made a list of the five that were on my mind the most, the five people that I once had in my life either in love or friendship and the reasons that they were no longer with me. I wrote the reasons why this friendship or relationship ended and rewound myself in time like an old video cassette.
My evaluation at the end of this was that indeed I had made things worse through thinking and contemplating about these events too much. Time may have healed the wounds for them, yet for I my wounds were still being licked the acidic tongue that I sometimes possess. So I have exorcised these demons this afternoon. One by one they had become a distant memory. Whatever was said, whatever was done forgiveness is there.
If we do not learn to let go in life then how can we move on? How can we build the trust that we once had yet seem to have let go. Many people often say to me “Look after number one”. If we only do that then how can we look out for others? The memories that I have of these friendships are part of me as my soul is, without those memories I would not be the person that I am today.
None of us are experts in life, we will always continue to make mistakes yet the sign of age and wisdom is the fact that we can accept that we were wrong and we can accept that life continues. That surely is the most important lesson to learn.