Note: this is a thought experiment - these ideas I express are very subject to change.
The idea of "letting go" is often made more palatable with the addendum "something better will come along". But could it be that this addition misses the point?
Can we let ourselves "let go", even if we don't genuinely believe anything better, or even good, will come from it? Could there be any benefits to living this way? If so, what might they be?
How can you (and why would you?) really let go if you didn't believe any good would come from it? Is it, at this point, an act of sheer exhaustion - like a free solo climber who, having misjudged his ascent, clings fiercely to the ledge as their stamina agonizingly drains - until that final moment of utter exhaustion and surrender, and death ensues?
Sometimes, letting go really can feel like a life-or-death matter. Strangely enough, this is the easier variant for me. What scare me more than letting go and going out like a flame is letting go and having to live with the consequences of it from the potentially resulting pain - like a dull ember, lodged in my chest that never dies out as the years press on... It's not annihilation that scares me - it's time and pain married together, stretching on, and on, and on...
So, is there any answer? Is there any benefit to letting go, when there is apparently nothing to be gained by it? And nothing to be gained for whom? While it is sad to say goodby to those we love (I wish I knew less about this) in the cycle of life - from an evolutionary perspective, death allows the gene pool to not stagnate. This is a benefit to the survival, overall, of the human race. But what about those that "let go" into death? What do they gain from it?
Perhaps it's not that "letting go" is something we "should" do, as much as it is one of the most fundamental of natural laws. Whether or not we like it, we will all let go eventually, as the sands of time march on and entropy absorbs its inevitable inheritance. In the end, we will all let go. I guess it might just be a matter of how much of a fight we want to put up.
Getting back to the idea of time and pain stretching on and on - maybe really letting go and giving into the potential annihilation is the only real alternative choice. Maybe we get to choose. Do we choose a life of pain and fighting against one of the most fundamental laws of nature? Or do we choose a life of least resistance, where we have surrendered the illusion of control...
Honestly, neither one seems to be an easy choice.
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