The Art of Letting Go
Life is a mystery. Lorena's second essay for the Health lane — on impermanence, flexibility, and learning to inhabit the present moment.
El arte de soltar.
Life is a mystery.
We spend much of it trying to understand everything, control every step, and find answers to every question. We want to know what comes next, how to avoid pain, how to make sure things turn out exactly as we planned.
But with time, we discover that much of wisdom lies in trust. In surrendering to what we cannot change and fully embracing what we do have.
Because, in the end, not even our body truly belongs to us.
One day, you come to understand that your heart beats without asking your permission, that the cells in your body are constantly being born and dying, that time moves forward no matter how hard you try to stop it. You realize that life was never something you could possess, but rather an experience entrusted to you for a brief moment.
And when life is such a brief, fleeting, and fragile experience, you begin to ask yourself what truly matters.
Perhaps what remains is not accumulating more things, more achievements, or more recognition.
Perhaps what remains is learning how to inhabit the present moment.
A difficult task.
Especially in a society guided by standards that no one seems to know who invented. Standards that measure us, compare us, and classify us. Endless lists of tasks, goals, expectations, and demands that often end up becoming invisible prisons.
We were taught to produce
before we were taught to live.
To run before we were taught to contemplate.
To compare ourselves before we were taught to know ourselves.
And so we carry burdens we never even chose.
Yet there comes a moment when something changes.
You begin to realize that life becomes much kinder when you let go.
When you accept that there will be days when you feel capable of anything and others when you can barely hold yourself together. Days when you are brilliant, productive, strong, and confident. And days when you are not. Days when others seem to move faster, do better, or go farther. And that’s okay.
Because flexibility is a form of wisdom.
Accepting that sometimes you can and sometimes you cannot.
That sometimes you are strong and sometimes you need to rest.
That sometimes you bloom and sometimes you simply survive.
Because you are human.
And perhaps that is one of the keys to navigating this brief passage through life.
If we pay close attention, nothing in nature remains still.
The day is constantly changing. It has the light of morning, the intensity of noon, and the shadows of night. It has seasons, storms, and clear skies.
Trees bend with the wind.
Rivers change their course.
Clouds never keep the same shape.
Everything fluctuates.
Everything transforms.
So why do we insist on being rigid?
Are we surrounded by trees made of concrete?
Does nature teach us to remain motionless?
Is it stagnant water that gives life?
No.
Life flourishes where there is movement. Where there is adaptation. Where there is flow.
And perhaps the people who struggle most to flow are ourselves.
That is why, after so many searches, so many questions, and so many attempts to control everything, I always return to the same conclusion:
What we have is this.
This instant.
This moment.
This precise second in which you are reading these words.
And though it may seem small,
your entire life is here.
If the present moment you are trying to inhabit is a sleepless one, Torrie’s wind-down ladder for falling asleep faster is a practical place to begin. Lorena’s first essay for the lane, The Invisible Roller Coaster, sits on the other side of this one, and both are collected on her contributor page.