‘Letting Go’ is the way!

There is no way or method to ‘Let Go’!

In response to my blogpost of yesterday a reader wrote to me wondering if there was a method to letting go: “I find it very, very difficult. The more I try to let go, the more I feel the urge to be in control. I feel that we have been given a human mind only to solve the problems we are faced with. And letting go, without attempting a solution, or in spite of attempting a solution, is counter-intuitive to being human! Is there a progressive approach to letting go?”

Honestly, there is no easy explanation to this conundrum. Because truly the benefits of, the value in, letting go cannot be explained. It has to be experienced.

Even so, let me attempt to share what I have understood from my own experience of learning to let go. When we are confronted with a problem situation, we want to solve it. We believe that either we can solve a problem or at least we believe we can find someone who can solve the problem for us. Well, if we can solve a problem, or if someone can solve a problem for us, surely, there is no problem. But there will be Life situations when no one can solve your problem. Life – and time – alone can solve your problem or heal you. Ask, for instance, those people who lost their dear ones in the MH 370 episode. Or ask the Talwar couple who are in Dasna jail in UP. Or ask me and Vaani – and we will tell you what it means to be living with a problem that refuses to get resolved despite all our efforts.

But that’s not the only way to look at problems of an enduring kind. Look at them another way too: No matter what you do, how hard you work, what you wish, whatever has to happen alone will happen. So, when you realize that something’s not in your control, when you are unable to control the flow of events in your Life, don’t resist it.Just let it happen. You simply learn to go with the flow.

My late grandfather, my father’s father, used to say, in chaste Palaghattan Tamizh: “Nadakarthu ellam nadakarapadi nadakattum.” Meaning, let everything happen in its own way. It also means don’t come in the way of Life. Because in reality, Life has been happening in its own way – whether you liked what happened or not, whether you like what you are getting or not. And if you elevate yourself to see Life from a spiritual plane, there are no problems. There are only events. Mere incidents on your journey called Life. You call something, which really is a simple event, a problem because you don’t like it, you don’t want it in your Life.

Letting go is not a call to inaction. Letting go is wisdom. If you like, you can call it an advisory which says that despite your best efforts, if you don’t see the results that you want, don’t agitate, don’t despair, just go with the flow of your Life. Which is why the spiritual perspective that there are no problems to be solved, there are just events to be experienced, is very valuable. When something is an experience, whether you like it or not, you have to learn to live and deal with it. It is only when you label something as a problem, that you feel you must solve it!

If you observe your Life or that of those around you, apart from all the challenges that Life throws at us, we create a fresh one for ourselves by seeking methods to deal with Life. We have become so method-driven that we now want to know if there is a method to intelligent living, if there is a method to inner peace, if there is a method to happiness and if there is a method to letting go. Life doesn’t work on theories or models or constructs for methods to work for, or in, Life. In my humble opinion, and from my experience of this lifetime, there’s no way to let go. Letting go is the way!

Our Life design, the Master Plan, is inscrutable – but has to be accepted and faced!

Anything, absolutely anything can happen in Life. You just have to learn to face it and deal with it.  

A couple of days ago I finished reading “Aarushi” (Penguin, 2015) by journalist Avirook Sen. The book obviously tells the story of the double murders (of 14-year-old Aarushi and the middle-aged housekeeper Hemraj) that shocked all of India in May 2008. But more important, the book tells us that Dr.Rajesh Talwar and Dr.Nupur Talwar, Aarushi’s parents, did not kill her. In telling us so, Sen makes few things very evident to the reader: how flawed our judicial system is, how there is a heartless, cold bureaucracy that thrives at our premier investigating agency, the CBI, and how lawyers, and their often flaky strategies, can ruin a good chance for a client. Sen does not make an explicit summary of these points. This is what you glean through reading his unputdownable book. But above all that is evident, there is also the implicit Life lesson that one picks up – anything, absolutely anything, can happen in Life; and all you can do is face Life and deal with it.

Sen quotes from Dr.Rajesh Talwar’s journal entries on the immediate few days/weeks the couple spent in Dasna jail after their conviction on 25 November 2013. I reproduce some of the quotes as they are:

3 Dec 2013: Still can’t understand how this happened to us. If only I would have gotten up….I could not even save my dear Aaru. Very difficult to live without her.

9 Dec 2013: Miss Aaru so much and that time and our Life. People talk about their children and what they are doing. They come and meet them in jail. But for us, nothing.

10 Dec 2013: Met Nupur in the afternoon. It’s really strange what Life has dealt us. But this is what it is.

18 Dec 2013: This is the 25^th year of our marriage and we will celebrate 25 years on the 19^th of January (2014). Could anybody imagine where we would be on our 25^th anniversary? No Aaru, no house, no clinic, no money and sitting in jail for something we haven’t done.

Dr.Talwar’s journal entries gives us a peek into how we think through a cathartic time in Life. When you read “Aarushi” you will realize how the Talwars have been done in by Life. Yes, we can blame the investigators, the judicial system, the witnesses who were influenced or coerced and whoever else we want to; we can even blame the Talwars for sleeping through the most dramatic and gruesome night of their Life. But ultimately this is the design for the Talwars’ Life: No Aarushi, no house, no clinic, no money and sitting in jail for something they haven’t done. They simply can’t escape it.

This is the way all our lives are designed. We can’t escape that design. We can fret, fume, kick around, bawl in agony, fight, resist – we can do all we want and can do, but Life goes on happening to us. The way it wants to. The Life design we all have to face and deal with is inscrutable. Some call it karma. I believe it is a Master Plan. And as I have learnt from someone, and learnt from being through Life’s experiences, the Master Plan has no flaws. We may think it is flawed because we believe we don’t deserve what we get or what happens to us. But in the end, it all adds up, all of it makes sense. You do eventually realize that whatever happened, happened for a reason and, believe me, for the good!

Dr.Talwar runs a dental clinic inside the Dasna jail. Even as he and Nupur await their appeal for suspension of their sentence by the Ghaziabad CBI court to be heard by the Allahabad High Court. The truth is, reveals Sen, the Allahabad High Court is presently hearing appeals from the 1990s. So, you can imagine how long it can take for the Talwars’, who were convicted in November 2013, appeal to be heard.

That brings us to a key operative word, a killer App, if you will, to face and deal with Life stoically – that word is “acceptance”. You can’t control what is. You can’t create what is. And because it is what it is, you simply have to accept what is; while continuing to do your bit to make each day count, and keep on living the Life that you have!