What Fall teaches us about letting go

In team building activities, one of the most hair raising moments comes when it is time for the ‘trust fall’. When your teammates link arms behind you and you fall backwards and, for a brief second, are in blind panic that there will be no one there to break that fall. It is, after all, not the fall we are scared of, but the complete loss of control for that brief second as we ‘let go’.

As we enter in to this very special time of the year, it is amazing to watch nature as every tree ‘let’s go’. That leaf, nurtured since a bud this spring, falling to the ground below, yet come the spring, a new one will replace it. Such is the rhythm and the cycle of life.

Many people seem to place their happiness on other individuals and circumstances and hold onto them. They stress about the possibility of losing them when something seems amiss. Those thoughts then turn to grief when something changes, perhaps a forced career change or divorce.

They attach to feelings as if they define them, and ironically, not just positive ones. If they’ve wallowed in regret or disappointment for years, it can seem safe and even comforting to suffer.

In trying to hold on to what’s familiar, they limit their ability to experience joy in the present.  A moment can’t possibly radiate fully when they’re suffocating it in fear.

When they stop trying to grasp, own, and control the world around them, they give it the freedom to fulfill without the power to destroy. That’s why letting go is so important: letting go is letting happiness in.

Any one of us that have lost a loved one understand this cycle only too well. Some are taken too soon, yet some live a long life only to be taken during the winter of their lives. One thing is for sure, none of us can predict when our ‘fall’ will come.

If fall proves one thing it’s that, even death can be beautiful. Who hasn’t wondered in awe at the brilliant red and yellow hues radiating from half-bare trees as the leaves fall one by one as that tree prepares for winter. We should all get the chance to bathe in a beautiful glow just before we leave this earth and, according to several reports, we just might!

Just as in our own lives, there can be times when everything seems scattered in a million directions and sometimes our dreams and goals can be ripped up and blown a hundred different ways. As the winter comes we can find ourselves bare and vulnerable, like that tree. As the winter storms bend and stretch the branches, we find ourselves at the breaking point, but it is at this very point, that we, and the the tree, grow stronger. For it is in adversity that our true strength is found.

For any of us that have weathered that storm and come out the other side, we know that the first warm spring sun on our faces is just reward for having the courage to let go in the first place, and we are all stronger for it.