The Art Of Letting Go

There comes a moment in life when you learn to let go of certain dreams, friendships, or lovers that at one time meant everything. However, we do it knowing that  important things will come back. Possibly with different faces and more sincere smiles. That fresh breeze allows us to start over and over again.

It is interesting how  in the world of children’s literature we are offered lessons in personal growth. It would be good to think about them more often. One such example is “Wonderland of Oz” written by Lyman Frank Baum. In this unforgettable work of literature, we meet a young girl whose powerful storm sweeps her with her into a new and unknown world.

From the moment Dorothy arrives in Oz’s wonderland, she thinks of only one thing: returning home. His first fear in this new and horrific situation diminishes moment by moment thanks to his new and strange friends, silver shoes, and a very concrete goal: to find Oz’s wizard and ask this one to send him back home. To achieve this, he just needs to follow the yellow brick path.

After many adventures and failures, this young protagonist realizes that in reality, the  ability to return home was always there, within him. However, his fascinating journey is key to awakening his personal strengths one at a time, as well as finding the incomparable courage that each of us has a small part of within ourselves.

Getting lost and deviating far from our usual path is not as bad a thing as it first seems. Letting go of certain things, people, projects and goals is not the end of the world. After all, what it means is the steps we take and everything we learn. Only in this way can we allow it to return, which it needs to return, while advancing along the yellow brick path of our personal growth – or the “golden mean,” as Buddhism says.

What needs to return to us returns in its own time and in its own place. In the meantime, we’re practicing letting go.

Andrea is an engineer. He has created sophisticated and original vehicles for pets that can be adapted to the back seat of cars and that guarantee complete safety and comfort for pets. Every time he presents his plans to business people, he says his ideas would save the lives of countless animals. Those who die in accidents due to lack of safety.

So far, only one person is interested in Andrea’s idea, but  after an initial affirmative response, the company withdrew, saying the project was not feasible.  However, our protagonist has not surrendered. He will not give up and he has not allowed any of his dreams to crumble. Andrea understands that she needs to keep working. He has said to himself that maybe he needs to look for cheaper but still just as safe materials or look for other markets, present his ideas abroad and so on…  

He knows that opportunities will come, but they will come in their own time and place. He fully trusts that more people and organizations will be interested in his plan. For that reason, he continues to spend his time, ideas, and effort on his project every single day. The most likely scenario of all is that this young engineer will become successful sooner or later. As philosopher Jose Antonio Marina says, talent is functional intelligence. While we sometimes think everything is lost, there is always a yellow brick path,  right in front of us. 

Losing, getting a negative answer, failing, tripping on the same stone three times, or even falling in love with the least fit person in the world all have a purpose: to get a lesson. All these potholes on the road mean that we need to improve the strength of our purpose in life,  because after a storm the sun always shines and there is a need to weave personal goals that are more beautiful, valued, stronger and, above all, more resilient.

Sooner or later the opportunities will come back and when they come, we will be fully prepared.

After letting go, everything that comes back comes back differently.

The stars are so far away from us that even the light of all those closest to us takes years to reach our small planet. Sometimes, though, we forget it. There are evenings when we admirably show them one by one, forgetting that many of them no longer exist,  that they exploded a long time ago, spreading a cosmic vacuum into space dust.

We know that everything that comes back is not genuine, like the light of the stars. Sometimes we lose love and expect better, brighter, more passionate and more romantic love. Sometimes again, we give a chance to escape and expect the same happiness to come as soon as possible, in the blink of an eye. However, nothing happens as fast as we hope or in the way we dream it will happen.

We need to be patient and remember that things will definitely come back, but always in a different way. Maybe love will come again, but it’s calmer and richer. Or another opportunity comes that isn’t quite as eye-catching and brilliant, but one that brings more benefits.

It’s about being receptive and putting on similar silver shoes to the ones worn by Wonderland Ozin Dorothy. Although the films believe their shoes are red, the author of the book, Lyman Frank Baum, imagined the shoes to be silver for a very concrete reason.

Dorothy’s shoes represented the “silver thread” of spiritual growth. It is the bond with which we gain a clearer view of things and our own identity in order to attain wisdom. To understand that life is a journey where things are lost and gained, where nothing is permanent and where  everything that comes our way is a gift, we need to know how to make the most of it.