How to Let It Gooo, Let It Go!

Now that’s stuck in your head!

With becoming a parent and living in an economy with lots job scarcity, especially in my field, this song has been on auto-loop in the back of my mind. By the way: the singing is brilliant. The sentiment is lovely. But WHY does she only sign it in the middle of the movie when she’s basically telling her sister to screw off? Why don’t they sing it together at the end when conflict has resolved? It’s strange that this supposedly empowering song only occurs when she’s in isolation and upset.

It’s easy to say/sing the words “let it go”. So, how do we actually let something go?

I have discovered that it’s, of course, a paradox. In order to let something go, I have to experience all the dimensions of whatever it is, experience its grip on me, and then on the other side of that intense experience, I’ll have the space and grace to let that shit go. There’s no such thing as being able to be over something that we keep prim and neat and figured out.

Things that stop us from truly experiencing the impact of the thing that bothers us:
-Over-intellectualizing
-Avoiding through distraction
-Avoiding through busy-ness
-Avoiding through substances
-Avoiding through performative spirituality (you listening, yogis?)
-Talking about it like it is only a joke forever

Which is funny since I’m a comedian, and we comedians joke a lot about what bothers us. The healthier comedians do the work of feeling all the things about the bad situation or event and then we are able to joke about it. Or we start joking about it so we can get down to how we really feel. In my humble opinion, it’s the less healthy comedians that joke about things and never do the work to feel/heal.

The phrase “let it go” is interesting to because when we let go of something, what we are doing is simply releasing its hold on us. One of my teachers says it so beautifully–I’ll paraphrase. “When you stop trying to give up your problems and you allow them to be and yourself to be with them, your problems give you up.”

...cue crying gently into a pillow

Let it go by letting go of the control you have on how you’re supposed to feel about it. Yes, feelings are scary because it sucks to feel depressed about a soul-sucking job, it sucks to feel scared about the results of whatever you’re doing, it sucks to feel that it sucks. Especially for longer than a day! Make sure you’ve got your mental health resource ducks in a row (maybe don’t ask ChatGPT for advice, but ask it to make a list of low-cost and/or easily-accessible mental health professionals) and allow the dark, cold night to pass. There is a dawn. It’s all cyclical. Now, let’s sing it together…