people always say staying strong is hard but they never tell you that letting go is a harder task.

in our lifetime, we have to learn how to admit defeat continuously and let it go. this course of action will bring us far but how many of us actually can do it?

i read somewhere that letting go is "an inherent paradoxical notion" and it took me time to fully understand what it meant.

when we are young, we have to learn to let go of our childhood fantasies and face the reality of high school, friendship dramas and GPA scores. it wasn't an easy task, learning to grapple the ropes and survive. thinking back, i didn't know how i did it.

and back in college, learning how to let go of your loved ones to pursue something you are passionate about certainly wasn't easy. its not the fact that you won't see them in the next few years but the fact that you will miss the sense of security and familiarity they have given you.

even at work, we have to learn when to let go and chase for something bigger and less realistic. when things don't work out right, it's hard to give up. that's because we will convince ourselves repeatedly that our years of hard work will go down the drain despite knowing that holding on won't bring us anywhere.

and how could i miss out, relationships. i dare say we have all been through our own fair share of failed and successful relationships. there are always times where we have to learn how to let go of the person we love, simply because they are happier without you. be it a close friend of yours or your "other half", this task of letting go wasn't as easy as said. in my own experience, this was the hardest; to give up on someone you hold so dearly, it takes a tremendous amount of courage, strength and love.

i learnt that the harder we try to let go, the more adamant it seems on sticking with us. for two years, i tried to let go. i spent days trying to be happy but more often that not, i lay in bed with a depressed, exhausted mind. no matter how hard i tried to fight, i never seemed to gain the upper hand. so one day, i decided to let Mother Nature do its work. i wanted time to heal the wounds. i didn't want to stare at a wound which only seems to get worse each passing day.

and boy did it work. unintentionally, i started to let go. i no longer tried to force it; if i was happy then i am happy. if i am sad then i am sad. what's the point of forcing something when it won't work? like in a heated argument, if you think you are not going to win, you won't. hence in the same vein, you only win when you cease to counter-back. a hot exchange of words won't get you anywhere in the long term. letting go only happens when we stop forcing it.

what we can only do now is to embrace the future. let the past and present mingle and change who you are. at every second, you are changing. a splash of paint there, a scrap here, you are changing constantly. you may tell yourself it's not welcoming but it's the only way for a real change to occur.

because the truth is, we can't let go deliberately. we do so in an unfamiliar environment, slowly but surely, opening our eyes up to a whole new world.

and in doing so, we are supposed to let life spill from the warmth of our palms and past mistakes slip through our fingers.

this way can we then learn to let go.