Learning To Let Go

When I was ten, I was a hardworking kid. October was a great time of learning about different items from how life works its bad events into our lifetimes to how certain things work. I was really excited to finally go back to the Bay Area after five, long months of being all cooped up in my house (which can actually be boring). I walked into our master bedroom, a medium sized room with a king-sized bed in the back, I went inside to find my parents chatting about Lolo’s (lolo is grandpa in tagalog) death the previous week.

So, nearly two year later, on August 20, 2013, we drove to a beach in the Bay Area, (although I can’t remember which one though). We had a great time at the beach, but we weren’t there for the fun, we soon figured out. Lola (lola is grandma in tagalog) held a pot of Lolo’s ashes as if one of us was gonna decide that they were going to be a jerk and swing their arms and hit the pot out of her hands. Lola had learned to let the death go. Then we spreaded Lolo’s ashes into the ocean: Lolo’s final resting place.

Lolo had died of liver cancer on October 4, 2011. We had hoped that Lolo wouldn’t die, but boy were we wrong. He had been battling cancer for nearly two years. I was told that he had died on the 12th by my father. I had already knew that he was going to die at some point.

Wow, I thought to myself, Lola had finally learned to let it off of her mind. It told me to forgive and forget, or I will call it let it go. We were all crying of course, but to me, this was an amazing thing indeed. I would rather smell the salty sea, hear the soft sound of the waves crashing onto the shore, and feel the cool, ocean, breeze rush past my face than the smell the ashes of a dead body (if ashes had a smell anyway). At this time, I learned to let it go, I needed to send it sky high.

To me, letting things go is like freedom. It frees me of this rusty old chain that wraps around me, crushing and tightening it’s grip on me, making me forget what is right in front of me. Then, there is a key. A shiny, bright, and golden key that helps me get free of this horrible chain. The event or thing is the chain. The key is the phrase “let it go”. We shouldn’t hold onto the past, for it makes us weak and helpless. It prevents us from realizing what is truly in front of us. Our goal is what we really need to focus on.

To me, being able to push aside the unimportant things and focus on my dreams is really amazing. I can imagine myself laughing at life for trying to ruin my track. As long as I am supported by others, I know that I can’t lose my sense of self.

So, the life lesson that I had learned and wanted to hopefully teach you was to let things go. Why should we any way? Well think of it as this way. If we never have our minds set on our dreams because of what happened in the past, we would never reach our dream.It is important that we remember the past, but we also need to yearn for the future. We are all granted bright futures, but to reach it, we need to forget the non-important things. We need to know that things don’t last forever, so we shouldn’t get all hung up about it.

This lesson that I learned has taught me a lot. From don’t forget your dreams to forgive and forget. There is still another way that I am about to mention. You can still honor them by doing what they like once in a while. I can still honor Lolo by doing things related to basketball. Why? Lolo loved to play and watch basketball. I still want him to know that I still love him. How can I put this into words?

I believe Letting Things Go is just that.