Hangers On

A letter about letting go (for all of us who hate that)

Jan 26, 2025

Dearest reader,

This week I find myself thinking about letting go.

I don’t like thinking about this topic, because I am very, very bad at it.

You know when you meet those people who are like, “Why are you being so intense right now?!! Omg!! Whatever!! It will be fine!”?

I am the person they are talking to.

I am not a letter go. I am a hanger on.

I am a hang on so tight that my fingernails start bleeding.

Us hangers on have a superpower of resisting what is.

Oh man.

I am so so good at resisting what is. Mmmmmm YES! Love a good resist.

It’s an interesting place to be as someone who has trained to teach people mindfulness – which is, really, the art of letting go.

But, as I’ve said a million times, that’s why I’m good at teaching it: Because I’m terrible at practicing it. It doesn’t come naturally to me, so I’ll never be that teacher who’s smugly judging folks who can’t just “let it go”. Because shit. Neither can I.

Anyhow, this is what I’d like to discuss with you today. I hope you’ll join me.

So, the world is falling apart

I’m sure you’ve noticed that the world is feeling extra scary this week. I don’t need to regale you with stories of what’s taking place. I’m positive you already know, and likely are feeling the same as I am – like someone has placed me on the turntable inside a microwave on high for far too long. I am dizzy and sizzling and overcooked.

I’ve been feeling like what I am seeing ahead of us as a species is absolutely terrifying. The level of gloom is like a scary movie that I would never want to watch in real life (I hate scary movies).

And my body resists it.

My shoulders are permanently clenching my ears. My breathing is shallow. I have to consciously remind myself to unhinge my jaw multiple times a day.

It’s hard being a super sensitive person in this current climate. We experience it not just in our minds but in our bodies. We FEEL the chaos of the world around us.

When I notice that my body is this tense, I know it means I am trying to push something away. I am afraid of something that I think is coming for me. I’m preparing to fight back in an effort to prevent that new reality from being born.

And while there’s enormous value in being available for the fight right now (please folks, the left needs to learn to organize as effectively as the right!!!), there is also benefit in understanding that we cannot control the outcome.

That’s a hard reality, but it’s the truth.

(Also, THIS.)

Picture it like this

In Taoism, there is the belief that all life belongs to a force of energy. I’m going to dramatically oversimplify this here, but essentially:

Imagine that we are fish in the ocean.
There is nothing other than the ocean.
Even as fish, we are also the ocean.
We might hold the cute little belief that somehow we are separate from the tide. But if the tide is coming, we will be swept up in it.
The tide holds wisdom about where it is taking us.
The direction is neither good nor bad. It just is.
Our job is to do what is right when we need to, in the moment.
Resisting the tide only drains us of the precious energy needed to take right action in the moment.
We can never actually resist the tide.

Now, I want to be clear: I’m not saying that we can’t prevent our world from being gobbled up by power hungry ketamine guzzling billionaires. I believe that we can and we will. More on this later.

What I am saying is that Taoism would recommend that we find peace in the all-knowing magic of the ocean, above all else.

We may think we know that the tide is taking us to a really bad place.

And maybe it will.

But also maybe that really bad place will be, like, a dangerous coral reef neighbourhood that we must be swept through to eventually get to a much nicer part of the ocean.

We are the fish, we are the tide, we are the ocean. We are the dangerous coral reef neighbourhood.

To resist any part of this is to resist our own energy. Because we are never separate from the Tao – the energy of everything.

(If you’re interested in reading more on Taoism I highly recommend the Stephen Mitchell translation of the Tao Te Ching.)

The great earthshake

I live with a hetero, cis white male. I happen to be married to him.

Politically speaking, he has historically voted for a left-leaning party. I know this about him.

I also know that hetero, cis white males are like, perpetually just one click away from being instantly right-wing radicalized on YouTube right now.

Being married to one feels like you’re shepherding a tender, vulnerable underprivileged youth through their adolescence while violent gangs attempt to recruit them to a life of crime at every turn.

The bids for their attention are growing louder by the minute.

And the unfortunate thing is that even a broken clock is right twice a day. The right would not be as popular as they are if literally nothing they said made sense. They have to leave a few logical breadcrumbs here and there.

Yesterday, my husband came to me with a sentiment of “the dangerous part about Trump is that mixed in with his bullshit will be a few wins that will embolden those who voted for him, causing them to believe they were right”.

Notice how this is literally what I’ve just said above.

I know this to be true.

Broken clock. Right twice a day.

I agree.

But because I was in resistance mode, all I heard was: “Trump good”.

I got up on my high horse so fast that I gave myself whiplash, wagging my proverbial finger as if he was a gun toting republican.

We live in fucking Canada.

I didn’t hear what he was saying. Instead, I heard what I was afraid of.

I was resisting SO HARD.

I think that at the core, many of us are afraid that we are outnumbered. We are afraid that eventually everyone else but me will be brainwashed into joining the right.

When I was little, I watched the 1988 movie “The Land Before Time”. I’m old enough that I saw it in the theatre. As a small child with separation anxiety, the scene where the baby dinosaurs are separated from the parents by a giant chasm that suddenly forms in the ground terrified me to my core.

COULD THAT HAPPEN IN REAL LIFE???!!!!

I was forever monitoring vibrations in the ground and ensuring I remained as physically close to my parents as possible just in case. Was I close enough that I could grab hold of them if the earth started to split???

(As an aside, holy shit this scene is still fucking terrifying even as an adult!! Whose idea was this to make this a children’s movie?!! This is literally carnage! No wonder I was scared…)

This is a bit what it feels like right now, for many of us I think. For sure for me.

Here I am, once again resisting the earthquake.

And the resisting itself is sowing division, even before the ground starts shaking.

Letting go

If I’ve learned anything in the last 5 years of my life, it is this:

If I want something, I have to learn to be okay with not having it.

The tighter I hang on, the faster I lose what I want.

EVERY SINGLE TIME that I have had a big goal, it only comes to me when I’ve completely, thoroughly made peace with the fact that it may never come to me.

Conversely, every single time that I have intensely feared an outcome, I have only avoided that outcome after I have completely, thoroughly made peace with the fact that the worst might actually happen.

I have to walk myself through a visualization in which I either imagine myself not getting the thing I want, or I imagine myself getting the thing I fear. I roll around in the worst case scenario – really allow myself to fully explore the ending that I’m scared of.

And then I force myself to think of the ways in which I would still be okay.

And here’s the crazy thing – no matter how awful the situation is that I’m imagining, somehow, I can always arrive at that final conclusion.

I will always be okay.

WE will always be okay.

The fear evaporates.

The fact is that we likely have a very dark and difficult few years ahead of us.

To accept that isn’t to say that we should throw our hands up in the air, give into the apathy, and join the bad guys.

To accept it is actually to promise ourselves that we will not waste our precious energy resisting the tide.

If we are no longer afraid of how ugly things may get, our ears may actually be available to listen to the words of those around us – even those who we fear may disagree with our own beliefs.

Let us not forget: We cannot connect with folks who believe we are committed to misunderstanding them.

We cannot connect with folks who feel like we think we are better than them, out to educate them because they are stupid.

We can connect with folks when they feel safe to express their feelings, and trust that they will be heard and given the benefit of the doubt.

The fact is that I really do believe that everyone wants to do the right thing. Right and left.

Also, I believe that folks on both sides of the equation will eventually come to the conclusion that this system is broken. I do believe that the billionaires’ days are numbered. See: Luigi Mangione, and the fact that just about everyone, left AND right, was like, “I mean… the guy has a point…”

I believe that we will come to understand the power of the people.

I believe we will eventually arrive at a time of greater peace and unity and equity. I just think we’re going to be swept through a very dangerous neighbourhood, temporarily, in order to get there.

The worst will have to be shown to us before we all recognize the severity of our errors, and become invested in correcting them.

Such is the tide.

Hang in there, my sweet little peaches

I doubt that I’ve given you any real peace, here, my sweet and sensitive friends. This is a scary time and I am feeling scared too.

But I hope that knowing that there are others out there like you will make you feel a little less alone.

If you are a hanger on, like me, perhaps we can both set the intention to practice letting go. I often find that I can get myself through hard times if I have a goal to focus on. Right now, that is my goal: Let go. Let go. Let go.

Grateful as always for your readership. Thank goodness for you.

Sending you so, so much love.

Kyra

Where the Map Ends by Kyra Evans

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