Letting Go

In life there are a lot of things that you have to let go of, but you probably don't want to. Pets, a favourite T-Shirt, inhibitions, anger, sometimes a friend. Letting go of anger is probably one of the hardest things to do, I would know. I am generally an angry person...I prefer the word passionate...but I've been told I'm angry. I think recently though that I've learned how to let go of some of that anger, and accepted that there are some things that just are not going to change.

A lot of letting go of anger is forgiveness...if you stop bringing up that incident that occured four years ago it might help a bit. Or just becoming a more "easy-going, less emotional" person helps too. The more you let go, the less that's going to piss you off. I have a friend who barely 'lets things go' and gets upset very easily, and through her I've learned it's important to pick your fights and some things are just not going to go your way. Now, she wouldn't be who she is if she wasn't like that and that's never going to change, I don't think I'd want it to. Picking your fights is an important thing, because if you fight over every little thing that happens then your relationships are going to be on edge a lot. And sometimes, they won't last as long as they should. Of course, there are some things that you just can't let go of or forgive, I am lucky to have experienced very little of these situations.

I find that a lot of anger is towards people I don't know, such as people who just walk into you on the street thinking that they own the sidewalk, people who ask ridiculously stupid questions in the middle of class ("What EXACTLY is a gene again Dr. Rye?"), those who cause all of the violence and hurt in our world and people who have a general lack of respect towards others. Is it really that hard to say excuse me if you accidentally bump into someone? Not really, I do it all the time. But I've realized that some people are just going to be jerks.

Recently I have forgiven someone for a situation in the past. I was very angry with this person and very upset, and it was affecting my relationships with people today. I found it was hurting me more than it was hurting him. Now this person and I have quite the history together; we were very close and basically a part of our everyday lives (saw each other basically everyday, talked if we didn't see each other, spent the night at each other's houses, etc). We ended up breaking up and I found something out that I wasn't impressed with because he lied to me about it. And it broke my heart. I basically cut this person out of my life, and at the time, it seemed like the best idea for both of us. We both moved on to new relationships (some better than others) and it was about eight months before we started talking again. I am glad that we did because I missed him in my life and he understands me in a way that some people just don't or can't. Sure I am still upset about the lying, but that's the way life goes.

Sometimes you just have to let it go.