eThoughts : The Art of Leaving

Sometimes we have to leave. Sometimes we’ll find ourselves being left.

If an alcoholic decides to give up drinking, they’re likely to need a new set of friends. If one decides to move, some will be left behind. If one gets promoted at work, one is among a different group of people. If one gets divorced, paths separate.

We tend to call it status, as in marriage status, employment status, economic status—life status. Status is a category and categories can be useful almost as much as they can be constricting.

Changing status is like crossing a threshold. Ever watch a cat go from inside to outside or vice versa? It’s as though they instinctively feel the energy of thresholds, and of change. It’s not always obvious, but enough so as to be of interest.

Status has a gravitational pull. Funny thing about gravity is that it both reaches out and attracts at the same time (I’m guessing the four forces of nature—the strong force, the weak force, gravity, and the electromagnetic force could be broken down into emitters and attractants, and even then emitters and attractants seem like two sides of the same coin). Breaking gravitational pull seems to require enough energy to overcome that pull. That’s a lot of change required to leave. And that leaving is likely to reconfigure our sense of status, and the way others see our status as well.

Maybe leaving is a quantum leap—across that “invisible” threshold. And, it’s not a question of if we are going to leave or be left, it is more of a question of when. Leaving is inevitable.

The trick, as I see it, is to do it as it “really” comes up, not as leverage. Good luck making the distinction. But in any case, I don’t see how we can go home again. We might meet up with someone again, but neither us nor them will be what we were. And, likewise, we might “return” to a favorite place, but neither that place nor ourselves will be what it was or what we were.

That reality is going to wreak havoc on attachment theories.

We may or may not like leaving and being left—it’s a contextual thing. But it is going to happen. It’s taken a lot of leaving and being left for me to catch on. I might not have learned it if I’d been “successful” at maintaining the status quo. Sometimes losing is winning and failure is success. And sometimes it takes a lot of strength to be broken.

Leaving and change are amazing teachers. Now if we can just become amazing students.