Many things in life are easier said than done. Every Olympic season we see content creators making fun of themselves for judging athletes when they don't have any semblance of athleticism themselves. On Reddit posts that feature impressive things there is always a comment that goes like "My toxic trait is thinking I can do this without any training."
One of these things that are easier said than done is letting go. So much of happiness is up to how much you can let go. One of the three poisons of the mind is desire — and that means when you don't have desire, you practically remove one third of all suffering. Isn't that crazy?
All you have to do is let go of your desires, and it's supposedly so simple! Just let go! Then we have the burning question of the day: how do I do that?
External Knowledge Vs. Internal Knowledge
What is the population of Australia in 1970? You don't know. But the official number is out there somewhere — all you have to do is research it to know.
Why do you keep doomscrolling when you know it's bad for you? The answer for this doesn't exist on Wikipedia, census reports, or any other confidential records kept anywhere. The only place for this answer to exist is internally to you.
Many people think "once I learn how to let go, I'll be able to let go of my desires!". But that's not how it works — because how can anybody know how to work inside the mechanics of your mind? Nobody else has access to it so they have zero way of knowing.
External knowledge (facts, data, statistics) can be researched and learned. Internal knowledge (why you do what you do, what you actually want) can only be accessed by going inward. Letting go is an internal skill, not an external one.
Don't Know How Vs. Don't Want To
Therefore it's not that I don't know how — it's a matter of I haven't looked deep inside of me enough. The DNA inside of an apple seed already has all the information it needs to become a full tree. With this genetic ingredient we add time and environment to eventually get a full tree.
The journey to deeply accessing the ability to let go is quite simple: you just keep answering your own questions. How can I let go? It helps to draw parallels from the physical world.
Suppose you're holding onto a hot object. You'd let go of it instantly.
Suppose you're not holding onto a hot object, but you're holding on to dog poop. You'd let go instantly.
Suppose you're holding onto an item that's not hot and not poop. But someone comes and tells you it's nuclear waste. You'd let go instantly.
Now let's talk about a more nuanced example.
Suppose you're holding on to what looks like a piping hot slice of delicious pizza. Perhaps New York Style. You'd want to take a bite out of it because you're starving right now.
Then I tell you I think I saw roaches in the pizzeria. Would you still eat it? I tell you that pizza's been sitting outside for days, it's just reheated. Would you still eat it? I tell you that it has rat poison on it because it's bait. Would you still eat it?
So the core question is not really "how do I let go?" — it's actually "how do I let go of something I want?"
What Is Good
We naturally want things that we think are good for us. We want more money because it would be good for us. We want more love because it would be good for us. Same applies for stability, career, aptitude, and so on.
Suppose you're waiting for the results of a job interview. If you get this job, it would be life changing. You've been waiting for a few weeks, and they tell you to hang tight and the decision should be made any minute, but you hear nothing.
You start having nightmares about additional rounds of interviews. You contemplate emailing them back over and over again. You sometimes do, but they just keep saying hold on. It's all you can think about during your day, as you chronically check your phone. This might be a really good time to let go of the attachment to this job.
In this state, it needs to be asked: is this job that worth it? But this question is a bit under-defined. Worth it in terms of what? Worth more than something? Less than something?
Suppose the stress I'm enduring right now is −100 every day, but the payoff if I do get the job is 1,000,000 and the downside of not getting the job is about −500. Then it just makes economic rational sense to go through this period, because the payoff is worth it.
But is it worth suffering for?
Is there anything in life worth suffering for? Letting another entity have control over my emotions, my status, my well-being, my dreams, my attention focus throughout the day. Is that something I would be willing to give up for happiness? Especially when happiness has no conditions or dependencies?
If I use spoons, forks, AND chopsticks and I choose chopsticks for a particular meal, then I'm choosing out of agency. But if I choose chopsticks because that's the only thing I know how to use, then I'm not really choosing from a full range of possibilities. Are you choosing your desires, or are your desires choosing you?
The answer CAN be yes, if you truly understand yourself inside and out. We think we know what's good for us. But what if we don't know? You may end up with the same conclusion — "what I want is good for me" — but the process you go through to verify this will be well worth it for your happy life.