To Let Go or Not To Let Go: That’s the Question.

Akshay Balakrishnan
6 min readSep 5, 2020

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I wish there was a way to know you were in the good old days before you actually left them.

-Andy Bernard, The Office (Show Finale)

Our life is like a book. A book that is being written as we speak. Whether you are twenty, thirty, fifty or beyond, you would never say you lived the same way across your lifetime. Like a book, it has chapters, demarcating a phase of your life. It could be about something like your life at school, college, work. You could write a chapter revolving around your loved one(s) and the meaningful relationships you made over the years. But what constitutes a chapter really, and where does a chapter end and another begin?

The Happy Chapter

For each person it is different. But for me, I can say the last four years of my life could easily be written as one amazing chapter of my life, if I ever got to write a book on the same. Arriving on the scene as a person who lacked self-esteem and found social situations difficult to handle, I can definitely say my experiences have helped shape me as a person who backs himself to take on the things that lie ahead and somewhat navigate through people and the act of interacting with them.

I could go on and on, but I have made my point regarding how highly I regard my life in college. With that said, it was time to let go of that, with a very different way of saying goodbye to all the memories and the people that made it happen due to the circumstances. There is only one catch though: I don’t feel like letting it go.

The lack of a proper closure wasn’t the reason (even though it might be). It is just that I feel like I found an environment where I had a place which I was happy with. There were so many happy memories associated with it and having to forego that to start a new journey was something I found difficult to cope with. I knew there was no going back, because there is no option to travel back in time- and besides that is not what life is about. But sentimentality still reared it’s ugly head.

Sentimentality.

The Not-So-Happy Chapter

This sentimentality was nowhere to be seen, when I closed a previous chapter of my life, before joining college: the high school chapter. Now, for quite a while after I left school, I had this perception that I disliked everything that was associated with it. Be it the people, the environment and anything else. Contempt, anger, frustration, regret: these were just some of the things that I felt when I got reminded of it. Specific incidents and actions remained in my head as a reminder of why I felt the way I did.

It was much later, with my new chapter giving me a sense of optimism and a new perspective, that I realized I had misinterpreted everything. Sure, I am still not going to look back on those days fondly, but why did I project such a toxic and horrible view onto those days? I was a teenager back then and so were my classmates back then. We all were transitioning from children to adults and weird stuff happen then.

Of course, yours truly also was involved in a couple of incidents which did not help things, but the truth was that it was never a case of the environment being terrible: I just never fit in. A square peg in a round hole. I never truly understood those around me, and neither did they. My bad experience with them didn’t make them bad people, it was just something that was never going to work out. Bar leaving school, there was no other way to leave them like you could leave a relationship that was not working out.

This realization also made me realize I need to stop doing this thing where I compare my present self with the people in the past, and especially their past persona. People change over the years and they develop new traits and characteristics. Whether they became better or not is a subjective interpretation, but people do change and it is not really fair to project your current self, especially to the teenage versions of people.

Breaking away and creating a new persona

In any case, why I mention this is that after high school, I made a conscious choice to disassociate myself from anything related to the former when I started college life. It was no mean task, compounded by the fact that I had eight of my former batch-mates join the same college, yet I went through with it. It took me time, but eventually I started learning about other people and understanding how they would fit in with me.

In due time, I discovered the right people to be with and this helped enrich the experience of my college life. The whole idea of writing a totally brand new chapter, exploring various parts of yourself which may not have been possible if others knew you from your past, was something exciting and transformative.

But now, this has come to an end too. Subconsciously, I feel like things cannot get better and can only go downhill from here. But what fun is there in life if you think like that? Shouldn’t life be about living in the moment and enjoying the best bits of it?

It also hit me that I knew people who already subconsciously thought their school life was so good that they did not want to let go of that, which led them to not enjoy the sequel as much as they could (or should have). May be they had legitimate reasons not to enjoy their college life, but it could also be that they didn’t want to tamper with a past memory that meant a lot them?

I realized that this could be me in the future if I let this kind of thinking seep within me.

Why do I want to cling on the past?

My answer would be the same reason as the decision I made four years ago: the cutting of existing bonds and activities that gave you positive emotions. It was easier to do so back then, because the negatives outweigh the positives and I could make peace with the decision to start anew. But that goes for today too.

How much ever you try, bonds will wear with the passage of time. It is inevitable. We are the average of who we are with at present. No matter how much we try, the need to live in the moment will ensure that the past bonds will erode. Sure, it doesn’t mean you can’t maintain meaningful relationships in the absence of physical presence. With technology rapidly evolving, keeping in touch with people has become much easier. But even in this case, it doesn’t stop relationships from waning.

So what do you do? Should you keep mum as the bonds quietly drift away?

Ted’s advice.

Take the initiative. If you are in the position to do so, please do reach out to your friends. Life is seldom best lived alone. Friends and family help you, celebrate the glorious moments and help you through the toughest of times. Knowing you are never truly alone is something that is truly great.

But this doesn’t mean you obsessively cling on the past either. Give it a chance, if you realize that things are not going to work out, make peace with that. The end of a close friendship or a chapter of your life does not negate the great memories you had. Acknowledge that things have changed and it is time to move on, but be glad you could have a great time. And continue enjoying whatever life throws at you, even if it is the scrappy bits.

In conclusion…..

I do not have a conclusion. For there are many stories, many chapters, many relationships, many memories that lie ahead. It may be great. Or not. But what’s the point of living if you don’t believe the best is yet to come?

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