Let it go, let it go

Lori and I were putting up groceries while our two year old grandson, Eli, was making himself at home, sitting there cross legged on the kitchen cabinet, chomping on a cookie. He reached for a frozen pizza I had set next to him.

“You can’t have that, Eli,” I smiled. “It’s frozen.”

At the word, “frozen,” he promptly began singing, “Let it go, let it go, let it go.”

Lori laughed; I was confused.

She had to explain that “Let It Go,” is a song from the animated Disney movie, Frozen.

I was clueless, so Lori pulled it up on her phone.  Seconds later we were listening to Idina Menzel belt out the words, “let it go,” while Eli sang right along with her.

Frozen has been immensely successful, the highest-grossing animated movie of all time, and a huge reason is the soundtrack. Since Disney uploaded the song, “Let It Go,” it has attracted almost 180 million views.

It‘s one of those songs that gets stuck in your head, one that kids love to sing over and over and over and makes parents wonder why they ever let the kids hear the song in the first place.

I know I’m taking the song out of its context, but “let it go,” can be a powerful mantra if it means being liberated from past mistakes that keep you from becoming who you are meant to be.

The inspiration for the song, according to composer Robert Lopez, who co-wrote it with his wife Kristen Anderson-Lopez, came from their two daughters. Lopez told the Los Angeles Times the song was meant to "instill in them the idea that fear and shame shouldn't prevent them from being the magical people they really are." 

For most people, that’s not going to happen as long they keep it and refuse to let it go. By “it” I mean emotions such as resentment, fear, anger, and hostility---feelings harbored because of wrongly placed identity labels that plague people and tie them to a destiny they were never meant to fulfill.

Becoming the magical, unique person you are intended to become involves letting some things go.

But ah, the strange satisfaction that many people have in keeping it instead of letting it go, that bizarre pleasure of nursing hurts---some from personal failure, others from undeserved assaults---that indulgence in misery that is part and parcel of tucking those injuries into the deepest, darkest places of the psyche, that habitual massaging of them that enables them to become an inner haven of comfort and justifies the refusal of letting it go.

But there are consequences that come with keeping it instead of letting it go.

A potent mixture of bitterness, anger, hostility, and resentment have specific physiological consequences, including increased blood pressure and hormonal changes linked to cardiovascular disease, immune suppression and even impaired neurological function and memory, according to research cited by Jordana Lewis and Jerry Adler (washingtonpost.com).

Living a life characterized by retribution--- the constant desire to seek revenge and air every grievance---is detrimental to your health. Living a “let it go” kind of life is actually health enhancing.

As Dr. Dean Ornish, Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California,  San Francisco, put it, “When I talk about forgiveness, I mean letting go, not excusing the other person or reconciling with them or condoning the behavior…Just letting go of your own suffering.”

It’s a concept that’s grounded in Scripture. One of the words translated from the Greek, the language of the New Testament, for the word, forgiveness, literally means to “send away,” or “let go.” 

Matthew used the word, for instance,  in his Gospel to record what Jesus said in that portion of the Sermon on the Mount  we call The Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us” (Matthew 6 :12).

If Jesus told his followers to ask God to let it go when they had sinned, why can’t we let it go with others?

Undoubtedly, there are wrongs all of us need to let go.

Eli sings “let it go,” not for past personal failure or wrongs done to him by others,  but more likely because of something musicologists call “earworms,” tunes with long notes and intervals that are very close together and somehow make for musical compositions that lend themselves to repetition.

But I hope Eli will one day experience the freedom that comes with letting it go.  For as much as I would love to prevent it, not all that is good will always happen to his now innocent self. And when bad things do happen, whether they’re self-inflicted or done by others, all we can hope for is the grace to let it go.