A Little Bit About Letting Go
Sometimes, faith becomes a last resort for people when it comes to solving problems or soothing pain. It’s too bad, because in some ways it may be the most effective. Dan Gilbert writes about “synthetic” happiness, where the human brain basically reorients itself to its fate and chooses to see the good in a circumstance or choice because it has no alternative. Our big brains have that capability, but I’m not sure why the additional layer of faith might sometimes be required to go all-in.
It probably comes back to the conundrum of free will or American individualism. We have so many incredible luxuries all around us, we believe we should be able to force happiness all by ourselves, either by getting a better job, a “better” wife or husband, or if only someone else (our children, partner, boss) would act right. We should be able to have enough self-control to just be happy. But life is kind of exhausting sometimes, and there is something very wonderful and calming to taking a back seat on this ride we call life.
There is something wonderful about passivity. There is something really freeing in “letting go and letting God,” a well-worn mantra in the recovery world. Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life by Wayne Dyer was a book that drove me crazy in my early twenties, because I just couldn’t get a grip on changing anything all by myself. It is a lovely book, based on the wisdom of the Tao Te Ching and applied to modern healing and life, but I wanted to throw it across the room whenever I read it.
It has taken a lot of time and considerable personal strength to choose to let go and let God (or Good) do some of the work for me. That’s what happens with trauma or fear; life is lived with a rigid grip, an attempt at control to prevent another crisis or disaster. Conventional therapy, for all its incredible benefits and research-backed effectiveness, sometimes has a hard time breaking through all that initial resistance to even get to the good work of helping people change their lives. That’s why many of us have to hit “rock bottom” before we are even willing to consider therapy, and why some of us have to fall even further before we are willing to consider faith.
Faith, it seems to me, provides a way for people to release their iron grip on outcomes, on possibility, on patterns. We become willing to do anything, including taking that first leap of faith. We become willing to reframe little things and see them in a positive light. Once that starts, it’s hard to stop. We start to see, and then believe, in better outcomes. We start to believe we are worthy of Good (or God’s good works). Whether or not this is just our big, beautiful brains creating some synthetic happiness doesn’t matter. What matters is we have begun to believe it is real and that we are worthy of it.