Step 3: Succeed; Step 2: Keep Going; Step 1: LET GO

As the story goes; there was a man who had climbed down a rope and was hanging on at the very end, he prayed to God “Please save me from falling.” Nothing happened, the man was too afraid to look down for he knew the fall would be great and his life would be lost, and he no longer had the stamina to climb back up the rope so he held on tight and prayed, and prayed. Well eventually the man had been there hanging onto the rope for so long that he died of starvation and thirst, and when his both body could hold on no longer it fell the whole two feet to the ground that had been below him all along.

You have probably heard that story or some version of it before in your lifetime, maybe in a devotional, maybe told as a joke, maybe as part of a sermon, but how often are we the man on the rope?

It’s difficult, often impossible, to just let go. It covers a dual definition of-course. Some people might want to tug on to their comfort zones, some might want to tug on to their failures. The phenomenon of not letting go often turns out to be the roadblock in our lives. A month back, I got to meet a few people on campus, who in their own very different way decided to take this tough call of Letting Go.

If I were to tell you to go on a non-stop journey on a boat, battling the fierce oceans and the raging sky, all alone, to orbit the earth, would you be able to let go of the symbolic pull of the port? The answer is most probably no and so is expected. But someone did. Capt. Abhilash Tomy spent months fighting storms after storms across all the oceans on the face of earth, alone of a water logged, wrenched, miniscule vessel of his, only to become the first Indian to circumnavigate the earth solo, without docking even once. After surviving in those fierce times, he mentions the most difficult part of his journey was Day 1, when he had to bid adieu to his fleet at the port at Mumbai. Letting Go. As per him was worse than braving the raging waves of the pacific, facing the thunder all alone in a dark stormy night.  Although he also says that the second most difficult part was when he had completed the journey and knew he had to dock now, “let go” of the adventure. :P

Arunima Sinha, a national level volley ball player, thrown of an express train over some brawl over money, defines life as those moments spent on the rail tracks, brutally severed and helpless, unable to move, unable to locate half her limb, bleeding, but refusing to die. She recalls her anguish lying on the hospital bed and thinking of the career that she had lost, of the life of an amputee that she would be now living. Even today she has tears in her eyes when she says that more than the physical pain, it was the trauma of not living the normal life that was soaking out all her energy to live. Well, none of us can compare our hardships to hers, but even she managed to let go. Let go of her dream to win medals for India, only to later become the first female amputee in the world to climb Mt. Everest. Not only that, she did her final stretch to the peak without oxygen cylinder because she had run out of supply. 

Examples are endless, Hugh Jackman got fired from his job as cashier at 7-eleven, because he supposedly talked too much with the customers. Today we all better know him as The Wolverine. Steve Jobs had to let go of the company that he himself had set up. He quotes, "The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”

  

Among all the other things that’s common in all these names that I have mentioned, one thing that drew my attention today was the fact that they all have at some point of time in their lives or even at multiple times, have “Let Go” of their current states, of their comfort zones, of their agonies, of their failures, of their pasts, to move ahead towards a glorious, satisfying and successful future. So are you ready to follow suit, or let me rephrase it, are you ready for STEP 1 of your lives?