A Psychology of Letting Go

Whether we’re talking about little things or big things, most people don’t like change. I am a notable exception.

Change fascinates me, whether it’s learning something new, seeking new experiences, or accepting a new concept that previously didn’t fit anywhere within my belief system. But these are all what I call additive changes. They all have one word in common: new, the opposite of old.

I once lusted for new jobs, new hobbies, and new philosophies. Inexorably, however, the process of growing older mandates what I call subtractive changes. They’re still changes, but a horse of a different color.

So let’s take a few minutes to look at both types of change: additive and subtractive. You might find this relevant to your own experience, your own feelings.

After narrowly escaping adolescence by surviving thirteen motorcycle and car accidents, snapping numerous bones during that time, my fearless demeanor still drove me to take on life with the exuberance of an intrepid explorer. I sought incessant change, at least that’s how I remember that time early in my adulthood. But those changes were almost all additive:

• Hitch-hiked across the US,
• Enlisted in four years of government service to frequently risk my life professionally (search and rescue, maritime law enforcement…),
• Collected a few college degrees,
• Climbed the corporate ladder,
• Played jungle-rules softball and competitive racquetball,
• Dove SCUBA to try ever more challenging dives–at night, on reefs, then in wrecks, drift diving in the gulfstream, then night drift diving…),
• Picked up sky diving (static, free-fall…),
• Traveled internationally for many years (half-a-million air miles per year for awhile),
• Sailed (club raced, lived aboard, voyaged)…

My quests for change and new experiences took on lives of their own, pulling me along as a willing but tired participant. And it just felt, well, right.

At some point, I lost my armor of invincibility. The time came for relegating some of my quests to historical artifacts and delightful memories. I made every attempt to face these subtractive changes constructively, but each loss extracted its emotional toll.

• So I gave up racquetball (bad back and knees),
• And SCUBA (no time).
• Then I walked away from sky diving as each jump became more adventurous than the last (sanity ultimately prevailed).
• But retirement hit me particularly hard since I had invested so much of my identity in my career.
• Next to go was sailing and the boat (bum back, loss of will to maintain a boat in the brutalities of a tropical climate)…

As Kay and I shuffled each of these subtractive changes off into the pages of our personal histories, a strange theme emerged. I found I needed to replace each loss (subtractive change) with a substitute (an additive change). Apparently, I was not entirely at peace with loss. Some psychological equation demanded balance.

• So I replaced my tech career with a passion for the arts,
• We sold the boat and bought the bus (and trailer).
• Instead of visceral adventures like diving, we substituted travel.
• And with a historical love of speed on two wheels, we re-captured our fragmented youth (married and parents as teenagers) by riding high-powered motorcycles and attending the largest motorcycle rally in the world (aka Sturgis) each August for many years.

But then–this week–came the hardest part of letting go.

Since my back surgery seven years ago (an old service injury that devolved over the decades), I put up with neuropathy (nerve damage), an artifact of that procedure. This just means my feet are no longer as sensitive as they once were. Sometimes they’re as numb as popsicle toes. And both feet working well are key to keeping a motorcycle’s shiny side up when stopped or stopping. They have not gotten noticeably worse, but…

Lately, my feet have refused to signal how much pressure I need to confidently balance my nine-hundred-pound touring motorcycle. Not good.

So after accumulating so many wonderful memories with our bikes, Kay and I decided it was time to make a subtractive change to our lifestyle before those good memories were obliterated by one bad one.

I listed our two motorcycles for sale, and within a week both disappeared from our lives. Yesterday afternoon.

So why am I sharing this with you today? I feel I was just spared injury.

After our last motorcycle drove away piloted by its new owner, my left foot unilaterally decided it would bear no weight. I nearly collapsed. Had I been in traffic on the motorcycle, this could have proven embarrassing at the least, and possibly much worse.

Cutting the bikes loose proved to be much more difficult psychologically than I had earlier imagined. Even more so for Kay.

But last night’s episode with the reckless disobedience of my seventy-year-old left foot offered me a timely omen. When you feel it’s time to release a dream, there may be consequences in ignoring such omens. When the omens are as timely as these, I’d like to believe there is a higher power watching out for us.

Similarly, if there just is no letting go of a dream, and we are fully prepared to pay the consequences or to reap the rewards, there is no force on heaven or earth that can be heard over the din of denial.

While we play the risk versus reward game every day, especially these days (just to risk a grocery or dentist safari), the risks of keeping and driving the motorcycles far exceeded the rewards. A no-brainer, as painful as that decision was.

The old adage says, “When one door closes, another opens.” So now we’re looking to sell our cargo trailer that hauled our tiny car and the bikes. We can now consider a larger and nicer toad (towed vehicle) and our shorter composite RV length (43′ without the trailer instead of 73′) will allow us to fit in RV sites that are far cheaper and potentially more scenic (state and national parks).

At least that’s what we tell ourselves every time we feel creeping seller’s remorse with the bikes gone. The cash is nice.

One door has closed, even while another has opened, and we are excited about the future. Be happy for us in our freaky golden years, y’all !

So until… and wherever…

Gene & Kay