Letting Go

Some of the best and worst of us go through life looking for something we never seem to find. The validation of those around us. We seek the reassurance that the person we are turning out to be at every point in our life is the one that those around us approve of.

We all have those friends, segregated into groups and kept there for when we need them. The school friends- who your parents know and love, who will always see in you the five year-old girl who blossomed into the confused, awkward teen and then barely saw you again. The puberty friends- who you met in junior college and tuition classes, who saw you when you were in your famous pseudo-confident, I-have-a-personality phase. The college friends, with whom you do all the illegal things you’d never, ever tell your school friends about.

And that’s where they stay. In their own little shells, ready to be called on when you need advice in their specific areas of expertise on your life.

Through life’s thicks and thins, through the ups and downs and the pretty much regulars, they’re there. To witness your circumstance wind, ebb and flow, changing you into the person you eventually become.

Then there’s that moment, that only very few of us have the privilege to step back and realise we’re living. The one where we realise, that all the people we concern ourselves with on an everyday basis, who we think about so often, who we pretend hold a place in our lives- don’t matter. What’s more, we always knew that. They never did matter. That all the chattering, the gossip, the mindless meeting was just that. There was never anything more to it. Because we realise, that in the struggle to be ourselves, we forgot how little we cared for the opinions of others.

There’s them, and then there’s us.
Us. The ones who once tried to fit in, gave up, realised they were better outside of the social arena, fought stereotypes and then grew up one day- suddenly- into the kind of people who never cared enough for stereotypes to fight them. Our victory was in finding the truest version of ourselves that we could possibly find, distilling it to its simplest form, and spending the rest of our lives staying true to it.

Somehow, we realise that the validation we spent some of, or all our lives looking for, is never what we wanted. We wanted that validation for ourselves. And we lose grip on all the people we surrounded ourselves with, who we kept close by like safety blankets for when we were confused and disoriented. We don’t need them anymore. They’re not who we’re living for.

And that’s when we find our real friends. The ones who tell things to us like they are. Who are disappointed in us, not when we let them down but when we let ourselves down. Who, when we lose clarity, determination or objectivity, become those virtues to us. Who speak to us in our own voice and somewhere along the way, help us realise that they were somewhere inside us all along.

Who remind us that, once in a while, you really will find someone who can look at you through your own eyes. That you chose a life of living for yourself, by yourself, and that you must always remember why you made that decision.

Because a true friend to a person who knows he’s better off by himself, is a friend who knows that adding value to one another is the essentiality of a good friendship. Who doesn't need to be told when to be there, or what to say, or how to say it- but somehow ends up doing everything right.

At the end of the road, when we find our real selves, in all our clarity, they are the only ones that stay with us. They are the only ones that matter. They are the only ones we want.

As for the rest- we just have to let go.