Time to Let it Go

The last couple of days I have been in a poetic mood, meaning that I have not been writing poetry but just seeing the poetic beauty around me. I get into these types of mood time to time, especially when I am making a transition in life.

I will not be going into the details of why the poetic mood has overtaken my mind, but I will mention a poem that I had not read for a while.

Mary Oliver's poem, "In Blackwater Woods," moved me when I first read it and it still continues to move me especially in the last part of the poem:

To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.      (In Blackwater Woods, by Mary Oliver)

 The last line is a lesson I have come to appreciate and one that I understand is difficult. Knowing the time to let something go is hard. It's as simple as that.

In my understanding of the world and of people, you either find it difficult to let things go or you are so consumed with the idea of not attaching to anything that there is no chance to even consider letting things go because you have not let anything in. The two scenarios both sound bleak, but I go with the first scenario any day, because it seem like you are living life if you do not allow anything to come in.

Letting things go is not just saying that you are over a situation, but more that you have done all you can do in this place and it is time to move on to the next point in your life.

I'm understanding that if you do not let go, you may not actually be able to reach what you are fully capable of doing.

It is a long hard process to understand this and I do not believe I am anywhere close to understanding this. What I can say though is that I am embracing this idea and it's making me a bit more courageous.