How true love is letting go

When I was growing up, I always thought that the phrase “true love is letting go” was a cheap consolation prize for those who had loved and lost in their search for “the one”. I used to wonder “How can it possibly be ‘true’ if you have to let it go? How can it be ‘true’ if it’s not there anymore?" I genuinely believed that true love was something you kept… and so, I wrote off this phrase with a scoff and never thought about it again until very recently.

What I have grasped about old adages such as true love is letting go is that most of them have a sentence missing that only reveals itself to you if you live long enough to work it out for yourself. I’m 32 now and I’m only now beginning to give this particular adage a second chance, and still I suspect that I haven’t even scratched the surface. Nevertheless, here is what I have deciphered so far about the nature of true love, the act of letting go, and what it says about being human.

1️⃣ “True love is charitable”
Nowadays, I don’t think the saying was really ever about romantic love. Maybe the phrase was actually about the very rare pearl that is charitable love which can pertain to romantic love but isn’t necessarily limited to it. But why would I want love to be a charity? I’m not here to beg for anyone’s love. No no no, not that kind of “charity”. I mean charity as in “freely gifted” with no strings attached, gifted when it was not mandatory to do so, and gifted when there was little if nothing to gain from doing so.

How do we know if the love we feel for others, or that others profess to us, is the charitable kind of love? I don’t know if there is a way to really know. My only guess for evaluating your own heart is when the mere thought of their absence, or their actual absence, creeps up in the dead of night and makes it hard breathe. If they’re still in your life, you think of ways to make them feel loved, and if they’re no longer with you, you hope that wherever they are, they are well.

2️⃣ ”Letting go is inevitable”
But aren’t we supposed to keep the love that we think is true? Well, yes and no. I’m not sure that anything or anyone we have is to keep. Even the ones we love are only around for a little while whether the little while is five years or five decades. But that’s so depressing. Is it, though? Doesn’t the thought of having to let go of, nay, lose them someday make you love them more charitably (patiently, generously…) precisely because the time is finite?

Maybe the reason that human beings contemplate the death or loss of our loved ones isn’t to drive ourselves to anxiety and paranoia, but rather to drive ourselves to appreciate them while we are lucky enough to have them. And maybe there’s more to the word “appreciate”, too. In this case, “appreciate” wouldn’t mean to say you appreciate them, but to intentionally do things that increase the value of your relationship in both your lives even at the risk of saying goodbye.

3️⃣ ”Love, then, really is pain”
To love at all is to risk losing them or having to let them go (and thus feeling pain either way). But as I grow older, this pain feels less like a punishment and more like a seed that can germinate new life… if only I don’t disrupt the flow of life with resentment, self-pity, and lack of charity. In other words, let go. I’m learning now that charity keeps love vulnerable and sweet; that charity is a gift and not an insult; and that the pain that comes with goodbye is only constructive if we let go bravely.

Maybe “true love is letting go” carries more meaning than at first meets the eye. Maybe it means that: To love or having loved at all is to feel charitably and thus fearlessly even at the risk of saying goodbye someday. Despite this risk, you love anyway because the joy of having had the privilege to love them at all far outweighs the sadness you’ll feel when they’re gone… and you know deep down that the pain that comes from such goodness can only sprout the most beautiful beginnings.