Most tell you to hold tight. But that’s only if you’re holding onto the right things. And how do you know if you are holding onto the right things?

You don’t.

The joke is in believing we know whether something is good news or bad news. This is how Kurt Vonnegut described the formation of Hamlet in his lecture on the shape of stories. The fact that Hamlet is a story with no swings of good or ill fortune but one steady plot with no twists and turns because Shakespeare tells us the truth that we don’t know enough about life to know whether something is good news or bad news. We can say something was good or bad in hindsight but that’s resulting and apparently, that’s bad practice.

So you don’t know if something will bring good news or bad news. You might hypothesize. But you must be hoping for good news from your decisions, if not…why make it? I guess that’s assuming a person is rational but we also know people are irrational…at least if rationality is tied to the concept of logic but I’ve begun to rationality too could be subjective to context.

But deep down you just know sometimes you have to let go. Sometimes it’s quitting a job. It’s a decision that feels excruciating to make over a two week period or a drip drip over six months. But it’s the decision you know you have to make deep down. To let go.

Sometimes, it could be something you felt like you dedicated your entire life pursuing for years. It could be something you staked your entire reputation on and felt was so right at the time. But there may come a point when you genuinely feel you have to let it go.

This doesn’t have to be permanent. Most things in life aren’t final and opportunities come back again.

The point is that you’ll never know whether it’ll result in good news or bad news. It could’ve been a mistake to let go of the idea, the job, the relationship, the pursuit. But the reason you let something go is to grab onto something else. If I want to catch a football, I’ll have to let go of the baggage I’m holding onto…..even if I doubt my athletic skills and might have the football smash my face.

Regardless of whether you receive good news or bad news, what’s important is that you listen carefully to the self. Listen carefully to that twitch in your muscle, that breathe you exhale and the little knot at the bottom left corner of your heart. Regardless of the news you receive, if the immediate feeling you get from letting go is one of unburdening, you’ll start out one up against fate.