I am sure that I have written about this before, but it is so striking to me that the first half of adulting seems to be so much about building things up, attaining, creating and while there is still some of that momentum going on in the second half of adulting, a new, greater emphasis seems to be on the “letting go.”
One of my meditations this morning talked about the difference between perseverance (hanging in there) and just holding on. When we are just desperately “holding on”, sometimes we are not letting go of a situation or a person or a lifestyle or a job title, etc., that has long passed its expiration date. That’s not perseverance. This type of holding on can turn to desperation, and an inability to move on with our lives.
Anne Wilson Schaef writes this:
“Perseverance is continuing to work at something for as long as there is value in working at it. Perseverance is being appropriately related to ourselves, the situation, and others involved. It is the commitment to seeing something through to completion and the ability to recognize when the completion has been reached.”
I think a lot of us are really good at the stubborn, “dog-on-a-bone”, toughly hanging on, aspect of perseverance, but the understanding when the time has come to let go, is actually the much harder part for many of us. We have been taught not to be quitters, and to always have hope. But I think sometimes we are confused between the real conclusion to something, versus the happy ending that we are deeply attached to, in our minds. Or, sometimes, coming to an ending of something is difficult for us because it is just our individual time of conclusion, in a particular happening – kind of like the passing of a baton, in a long race. It is hard to comprehend that when we are a part of something, that we won’t necessarily always be the ones to see it through to the end, if there really even is a true ending. We have a hard time seeing ourselves as just one part of a long story or journey or adventure. We fear missing out.
It’s interesting to me that when we are blessed enough to reach the second half of our adulting, a time when we have hopefully gained a lot of experience, and the wisdom that comes from all that experience, life shows us that sometimes the hardest lessons often aren’t about the determination to attain something. The dedication to achieve a worthy experience of living, and the moxie, and the stamina, and the steadfastness it takes to even make it to our second halves, while all very important, has all been building to what is sometimes the biggest challenge of all. The hardest lesson, that which we have prepared for, with all of this spunk and all of this persistence, is really the ability to know when a particular lesson, experience, and/or adventure in life, has been exhausted of all that it was meant to teach us. It has been wrung out and we have to take the exit sign, on to our next, new journey. The upside of this, is that we can transfer our hard-earned perseverance to our new focuses in life. When we allow ourselves to surrender to the conclusion of an old adventure, we realize that the immense relief that we feel, frees up new, vital energy that we can put towards new, exciting adventures, making us feel more alive than ever. And, at this second half stage of the game, we now have the wisdom and confidence of knowing that we have the perseverance to see the new experience through to its end, and we also have the knowing that we have the strength to let “it” go, once that ending has arrived for us.