Saying Goodbye

There’s a thing called exposure therapy. It’s where a phobia is “treated” with small doses of exposure. But what if that concept applied to everything that was painful like saying goodbye to loved ones over and over again? 

Exposure therapy for someone with a fear of heights might start with riding the elevator to the 5th floor and staying in the center of the building. Then, they might move out to a place where they can see the window. They’ll try that until they think they can walk to the edge and lookout. Maybe a few days later they will take glimpses down. 

The process repeats over and over again. Key here is that getting over the phobia doesn’t mean it doesn’t scare the person anymore. It still scares them. But the practice makes them braver. 

Practice can make us all better at something. We might never be good or great but we’ll get better. Then, we start asking ourselves if what we are doing is something worth practicing. What if we extrapolated this sequence to every painful thing? 

I left home more than 10 years ago, moved across the country, and made an effort to visit my parents every year. My romantic relationship was long-distance from different cities for 3 years to across the country for another year. I said goodbye constantly at airports and bus stops over the years.

I thought it would get easier. But I don’t think it does. I don’t think the pain ever goes away any more than 1000m off the ground ever not being scary to those without a fear of heights. 

I think I can face the pain of goodbye better and accept them as choices I’ve made. But there hasn’t been a single moment when I wasn’t saddened with each goodbye. 

I could limit the pain by not moving around so often. But that would also require controlling the lives of my loved ones and, well, that’s not how life works. 

The choice for adventure requires making the tradeoff to say goodbye to friends and family more often than those who do not make such decisions. These moments are never painless. 

The existence of the tradeoff never disappears. We just hope to get braver and accept the choices we’ve made with each goodbye.