It is essential to know when a stage of life ends because if we remain in it for too long, we lose joy and we run the risk of all the beautiful things we have experienced becoming grey. This is the case, for example, with relationships. When a relationship is mortally wounded, prolonging its end often only serves to bring out the most negative in each person, leaving us with a bad taste in our mouths.
That’s why it’s important to learn to close circles, or chapters in our lives, which is the same thing. It’s about letting go of people or experiences that once made sense but no longer do. It’s about putting an end to it so we can turn the page and open ourselves up to new experiences. Of course, it’s not easy.
The emotional vertigo of the past
The past is part of us, it has contributed to making us who we are. We cannot simply bury it because, sooner or later, it will resurface. That is why it is essential to learn to make peace with that history. Only when we assume and accept those experiences, we free ourselves from their weight to continue on our path.
In this sense, an experiment carried out at Harvard University reveals the enormous power that unacknowledged experiences have on our well-being. These psychologists worked with people who had suffered trauma and saw how painful traces are recorded in our brain.
Each of these people was read a description of their traumatic experience. Meanwhile, their brains were scanned. It was found that those who suffered from post-traumatic stress reacted differently. In practice, areas such as the amygdala, related to emotional responses of fear, and the visual cortex were activated. However, the Broca area, related to language, did not show much activity.
This and other similar studies reveal that when we do not accept a painful event, it remains active in our brain and every time we remember it, we relive it as if it were a real situation. The problem lies in the fact that we have not closed that chapter, we have not found a meaning to the experience and, therefore, we have not been able to turn it into another narrative experience in our lives.
Until we manage to close that circle, that experience will continue to cause pain and suffering. In fact, it can plunge us into a kind of emotional vertigo that prevents us from looking clearly to the future and healing our wounds.
Learning to let go of what harms us
There are thousands of reasons why we cling to the past, but at the root of it is always the fear of the unknown and our tendency to stay in our comfort zone. Although it may sound contradictory, we are more afraid of taking the next step than continuing to suffer where we are.
However, we cannot live in the present with one foot in the past. What happened, happened, we must free ourselves from its influence because otherwise, we will not be able to grow as people.
In fact, growing up does not only mean acquiring new skills, knowledge and meeting new people, but it fundamentally means letting go. In order to gain some things, we must let go of others. And that means we must have the courage to close cycles in our lives and leave behind people or experiences that once brought us much happiness, but now are nothing more than a burden on our growth.
What should we let go of?
– Everything that harms us and causes unnecessary suffering.
– Everything that robs us of happiness and makes us die a little every day, slowly fading away.
– Everything that keeps us tied to the past based on false hopes.
– Everything that doesn’t make sense in our lives and doesn’t fit into our new vision of the world.
– All the people who have abandoned us and do not want us to be part of their lives.
– All those places where we no longer feel comfortable and where we only go out of duty or habit.
– All those customs, beliefs and attitudes that are an obstacle to the new stage of life that we are going to face.
Closing life’s circles is not an end, but rather the beginning of something new.
Closing circles hurts, but it is necessary
Of course, closing certain chapters of our lives is not so easy. It often takes time and we are forced to go through a stage of mourning in which we can experience many emotions, from anger and resentment to sadness and nostalgia. All of these feelings are completely normal and are part of the process of letting go. The important thing is not to get stuck in any of them, to experience them in their own time and then let them go, until we have made peace with our past and only serenity remains in its place.
In this sense, the myth of the renewal of the eagle allows us to better understand the need to close chapters of our lives:
“The eagle is a long-lived bird, but when it reaches the middle of its life, it must make a difficult decision.
At this time, its claws are too curved and flexible, which prevents it from capturing prey. Its beak also becomes excessively curved and its feathers become very thick, making it difficult to fly.
So the eagle has only two alternatives: die or face a particularly painful process of renewal.
It will have to fly to a mountain, make a nest and break its beak against the rock. It will wait until a new beak grows, with which it will pluck out its nails and feathers.
It is a long, painful and lonely process of renewal, but the eagle that manages to reach the end will be ready to take flight and live for many more years.”
Of course, this is just a metaphor, but just like the eagle, there are times in life when we must let go of certain things in order to move forward. If we don’t, we risk being crushed to death under the weight of that suffering.
Reference:
Rauch, SL et. Al. (1996) A symptom provocation study of posttraumatic stress disorder using positron emission tomography and script-driven imagery. Archives of General Psychiatry; 53(5): 380-387.
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