On Dreamshaping: Letting Go Is Not Defeat

Mark McNease

Oftentimes the hardest part of letting go is simply not knowing what will take the place of the thing, person or situation we’ve allowed ourselves to relinquish. We may think the difficulty is in living without it, but upon closer inspection we discover that the real problem, and the impulse it creates to hang on, is being unaware what could possibly replace it. Comfort comes in many forms, including the illusion of certainty. Our routines, habits, assumptions, and repetitive thoughts all provide comfort—despite how uncomfortable we tell ourselves they make us! They offer reassurance that today will be as predictable as yesterday, and tomorrow will bring more of the same. Sameness is mistaken for safety. It allows us to be less fearful of what comes next.

Knowing that I have kept my life cluttered with the same things I want to be free from requires introspection that makes changing hard. I don’t want to admit these things bring order to my days. I may claim to be unhappy or displeased with my weight, or my behaviors, or my worldview, or my addictions, but they have provided me with continuity. I’ve trusted myself to wake up in the same dream since I was a child being told that dreams were beyond me, that I was limited and destined to achieve little in this world. Whose definition of achievement was another matter, and my resistance to that judgement, that taking measure of me, is among the reasons I survived. I wanted to see what could become of me, what experiences awaited in a new day, and I wanted to prove the assumptions wrong. Ultimately, the voices that tell us we are limited, and that play a part in our refusal to let go of the ordinary, become our own voices, the unwelcome narrator in our minds.

Another crucial component of an inability to let go is the belief that it means defeat. If we let go of a situation or a person, it must mean we weren’t good enough or strong enough or devoted enough to keep it. Our very identities can be entwined with our beliefs about the things we can’t surrender. Jobs are a good example. So many people become their jobs that leaving them, even when retirement becomes an option, makes us unsure of who we are. Being caregivers is another powerful example. When the person we’ve cared for intimately and with great effort dies, we may find ourselves feeling as if we don’t know who we are. And just as frightening, not knowing who we will become. Letting go in these cases is sometimes paralyzing, and can be compounded by the feeling that we have somehow been defeated—by an illness, by aging, by a world that is not invested in the shape of our dreams, and ultimately by death itself.

Letting go is not defeat. To finally let go, open-handed, wide-hearted, free-minded, is to open a space in our lives and invite something unexpected in. Maybe many somethings. New people, new ideas, new challenges, new breath. To truly let go is to breathe as if we haven’t inhaled deeply for years, the smell of new air, the sense of expansion and wellness. To let go is to triumph, not to be defeated. To be free at last.

Dreamshaping Copyright MadeMark Publishing