Let it Go, Let it Go!
By Lydia Nolan
December 14, 2024
It isn’t an easy thing this New Year deal. We speak of letting go the old and bringing in the new. This means everything that happened last year is to be taken with a grain of salt, or left behind, or lost to memories, or given to the cache of lessons in life. It is harder than it appears, which is why so many people’s anxiety is heightened during this season.
Many of us have lost loved ones this past year, or many have lost a love affair, or a job, or their homes, and/or many, many, other issues that were “NOT HAPPY,” which confront our senses, our emotions, our spiritual belief systems; our ability to look ahead.
The new year promises to be a whole other chance at getting it together again, at doing it better, at remembering those who are gone, but keeping a fire for their memory in our hearts—about the good parts, let burn the bad—and the new year promises to help us look back only for searches of lessons and not for ammunition.
Again, I know, it’s hard. Some of it is like leaving a best friend in a house on fire. It’s like having to say good-bye to your favorite pet because they bit someone, or moving into a new mental, emotional, physical, psychological and spiritual arrangement that is created by joy or trauma.
Some of us have separation anxiety: I know I do. I have lost so many people I have loved at a very young age. Some, with which I have not reconciled appropriately, some due to an argument that wounded my pride and left me childishly unforgiving. Some for good reason. It seems everything that alludes to a coming end, and a new untried beginning, creates a sense of anxiety in me. I am sure many others feel the same way, especially if they have experienced a trauma this past year, or any year for that matter. Traumas do not just go away forever, they have to be reasoned out of us through deep emotional, psychological and spiritual exorcism.
Still, there is nothing we can do about that. Acceptance is a virtue most difficult because it asks us to let go, leave behind what we cannot change, and start anew with the lessons we’ve learned, plan for a progressive future, and go on to live another year at best—remembering only when needed, because time is limited.
There is even a certain amount of guilt going on when those who are left in the past cannot come along—whether because of death, agreement, or dissolution of marriage or friendships. Yet, it is destiny and it is also part of life—to let go.
What we must do now is to love our best, to live our most, and to give of ourselves with all the past energy that life offers us, our best authentic selves that we have come to understand, and carrying in our hearts those who cannot come further in our life’s journey. But one thing (which I have learned most recently—or rather I have come to understand much more deeply) is this. We must try diligently not to point a finger at anyone, for any reason, other than to point the way for them to find what they have lost in love and innocence. The discourse of heaven or hell is between them and God, and not us. You are not alone. You have me, you have many others experiencing the same challenges at heart.
May your new year in 2024 be as rich and warm as you remember in good times, perhaps in your childhood, when your parents were there smiling at your youth and clueless behavior. Try to remember the good in them—they did the best they could, as did everyone and still as we all do. It was then, glorious, but you didn’t know it until now. So, do not forget that this year too shall end, and another may or may not come to you. Just go on and live as heartily as you can. Live for all those you must leave behind, and especially live for those who are here today, and will remember you fondly tomorrow.
A thought before I leave. Alfred Lord Tennyson outlived most his family. He was the fourth child of 12 children, and in the 1800s life was much less glamorous and scientific, but it was much richer in hope and a belief in God. This carried him through the heartaches in his life. And his poetry helped as well, you might like to read some of it. Weigh your life, balance it with those childhood treasures that were bestowed upon you, and discard that which leaves your heart heavy. Take care to learn from someone as this Poet Laureate of the 1800s. Everything is a blessing in some way or another—even the bad things may be looked upon as good, in teaching us what not to do or say to others.
Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year!
Love,
Alfred Lord Tennyson
(August 6, 1809 – October 6, 1892)
Ring out, wild bells
(Published 1850, and as Poet Laureate)
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
by Alfred Lord Tennyson
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