What's Left Behind (Part 2)

One of My little conundra that I frequently annoy the girls (and others) with goes as follows:

We are what we let go of, not what we hold onto.

I was thinking about this in light of My previous post, in which I talked about how some people leave D/s behind, sometimes permanently. And right in that word "permanently" is the crux of the matter, and the "proof" of the seemingly nonsensical statement above.

It's our nature to cling. Physically, emotionally, mentally. We cling to people, to things, and to ideas. We cling to the past -- sometimes perversely the worse it was the more we cling to it. And perhaps more than anything else we cling to our own idea of ourselves, and again from what I often see the worse that self-image is the more tenaciously it's clung to.

Where it gets very contorted is that we've lost perspective on the fact that that idea of ourselves is largely the accumulation and processing of the perceptions, thoughts, words, and judgments of others. What we have come to think that we are turns out to be largely "foreign matter" that's become part of "us" -- part of what I've called "the shell" in My posts about Fully Exploring the Known (see the April archives page).

Thus what I see as a large part of success in personal terms, both in daily life and in D/s, has to do with moving from the orientation of holding on to the orientation of letting go. The struggle is to identify what's become a part of us that never belonged there, and to slowly, systematically evaluate it -- possibly with the goal of eradicating it. But it turns out that realizing that foreign matter in the shell for what it is deprives it of its power anyway, so eradicating it becomes a moot point, often.

That is what I mean when I say that we are what we let go of, not what we hold on to. A recognition that the change in orientation needs to take place and a committment to that process.

So what's all that got to do with why people leave D/s and their reasons for doing so? A few things.

1. There is the "surface" issue, the "society" thing. D/s is not a mainstream pursuit -- there is, as cliched as it is, societal disapproval by and large and the emotional baggage that accompanies that. It's not to be dismissed as a factor that makes D/s more stressful than it otherwise should be. And "stress" is, in essence, a massive infestation of foreign matter into the shell. It makes us question our choices, our path, and usually not in a good way. The pressure of being "closeted," as it were, is more than many people can take. For others, the stress of being "open" is even worse. In times of stress we will cling more to the familiar, the stuff that feels like "us," even when it will go against what we know we want/need. It takes a "letting go" on a massive scale in order to minimize that kind of stress.

2. There are at times overridingly important realities. Age, children, work, health, safety, etc. At times there is a strictly practical choice, a sacrifice, that needs to be made. It's a cruel reality that we sometimes are forced to choose between what we are and what we have to be. That choice is above and beyond this discussion, except that I'll simply point out that it's important to be sure that one is choosing based on absolute necessities and not making the convenient, less painful in the short term, choice.

3. The pain that I've seen in people who've left D/s is not from having let go of D/s, it's from clinging to the idea that D/s was something they could get along without. Many people, and again this is part #1, above, actually do think that they are involved in a pursuit that is "perverted," abnormal. (And not in the kinky fun way). Decades of parents and teachers and preachers and talk-show idiots and sensationalized media have warped our ideas of sex and interpersonal relations to a degree that I'm amazed at the number of people who actually feel good about what they are. It's so easy to revert, to cling back to what will "work," even though in the long run that ends up hurting a lot more.

We truly are what we let go of, because only by letting go of what doesn't belong can we see and understand exactly those few things that we should, above all else, hold onto.