There are people whom I regret not seeing any longer – people with whom I no longer participate. One of them has died; another has just stopped calling. The pressure to reunite with estranged acquaintances is for me affecting. I don’t like conflict; and, more often than not, I seek ways to diminish the stain of a difficult relationship. My thinking is this, what advantage is there in maintaining a distance when one would prefer otherwise? Certainly, the privilege to feel as though one were “winning” or accomplishing anything by maintaining separation is questionable.
Yet there is currently a popular assertion that “you have to let it go” as though the association were destined to be transitory and forgettable. But my relationships are paramountly memorable, no matter that people have clearly absorbed themselves in more captivating society. Maybe it’s impossible to revive the past, to regain the gusto that once enhanced the confluence. Nonetheless I cling to the philosophy that having moorings to the past is a good thing. But still, there is that remote (and haunting) wisdom: Let it go!
Accepting the reality that relationships frequently speak to limited interests is not without its merit. When we are young our scope of correspondence is often noticeably different from when we are old. The human connections are not always emotionally or intellectually grounded. We may unwittingly or willingly bind ourselves with ephemeral bonds or flirtations. Though once again I argue there is no need to dissolve the entire entanglement for the reason only that one has had a change of mind or exhausted the appeal. Given the short span of our career on the globe, I would think it behooves us instead to harbour even the salty recollections of our past.
The expression “Let it go!” is a critical one. It is distastefully uncompromising in my opinion. It further is sensible for us not to contaminate what was clearly once a nutritious alliance with any manner of tarnish or impairment. Speaking ill of others is a curious preoccupation. I cannot escape the image of a see-saw, people simply going up and down at the outer limits of equivalence. It is the least favourable image of unity to see the connection as only one of bouncing back and forth, never touching one another except by the immoderation of tone or accusation. Challenging this mildly evangelistic approach to estrangement is the hardened precept that things pass. Regrettably, even if one were to acknowledge that blunt empirical reality, it is no cause for rephrasing the initial acquaintance as worthless. It is one thing to let go; it is another deliberately to jump overboard towards unknown and possibly perilous resorts. The romance with settling things once and for all is not altogether logical. While the initial alloy of the relationship may have changed, the compound is capable of alteration. Sharing that difference is hardly discredit to the audience whether or not conjoined beyond civility only. There is no imperative to reassert or activate the erstwhile elixirs of the friendship or love affair. Just as we ourselves have changed, there is value in pursuing at least a polite enquiry into “What’s the news?”
If, on the other hand, one feels the necessity to release someone, to abandon them to the waves and motion of the sea, then one must learn to bear the loss. It is an improbable manifestation of one’s life that someone simply disappears from view.