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
One of the hardest decisions in life is to let go of the people we love. No matter how irrepressible our desire is to cling on to them, we must let go and move on because they probably already have.
Unfortunately, liberating our loved ones doesn’t make it less hurtful. In fact, the pain is likely to be so overwhelming that we might rue our decision in the first few days, even mulling over the possibility of trying to get back with them. However, as the pain begins to subside, you start to see reason. Everything – both their decision and yours – begins to make sense in the grand scheme of things. It dawns on us that not everyone we meet over the course of our lives stays with us forever. If your life were to be a book, such people may be regarded as passing characters. They came into our lives to teach us a lesson – it could be anything from making us experience different emotions to helping us grow to showing us how we need to love ourselves better. Whatever it is, once this utility is served, they part company.
Some of these characters are really difficult to replace. However, it is only when you see why things turned out the way they did that the hurt starts subsiding. Ultimately, it is important to understand that we can have multiple connections with several people, but that doesn’t mean they are meant for us. Of course, this is easier said than done. After all, bidding adieu to someone is not half as difficult as getting used to a life without them, the kind of life that might have seemed inconceivable and completely unlikely at a point. But what is the point of holding on to someone who isn’t happy with you? Isn’t wanting to see your partner happy a prerequisite for true love?
Gibran Khalil Gibran, commonly referred to as Kahlil Gibran, was a Lebanese-American author and poet. Considered one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century, Gibran once wrote: “If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don’t, they never were.”