There is an image that is forever ingrained into my mind: my little sister hopelessly clinging with all her might to a tiny animal that wants desperately to get away. The poor animal is too terrified to love my sister and my sister loves the animal too much to let it go.
Of all the virtues there must be one to describe the phrase “let it be”. “Leave well enough alone” is close but does not quite capture the concept. Sometimes loving something too much will drive it away.
“If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don’t, they never were.” – Kahlil Gibran
It is rarely exciting to let something just exist. It is our tendency to mix our unbiased opinion of what someone else needs and our desire to obtain them as our own. In the end we end up trying to trap the other person in a prison we have made so they cannot get away, ensuring ourselves they need that cage to be safe and we need them there to avoid being alone.
But there seems to be a direct correlation between how much someone will despise you and how much you want to own them. There also seems to be a direct correlation between how insecure you are and how much you will want to own someone else. As a result an insecure person will want to control the lives of those around them in an effort to maintain emotional stability. Any sign the other person is starting to pull away and they flip out, trying to trap the person back in the cage.
Sting summed it up pretty damn well:
You can’t control an independent heart
Can’t tear the one you love apart
Forever conditioned to believe that we can’t live
We can’t live here and be happy with less
So many riches, so many souls
Everything we see we want to possess
If you need somebody, call my name
If you want someone, you can do the same
If you want to keep something precious
You got to lock it up and throw away the key
If you want to hold onto your possession
Don’t even think about me
If you love somebody, set them free
- Josh
