Any colour you like

"Some people believe holding on and hanging in there are signs of great strength. However, there are times when it takes much more strength to know when to let go and then do it."
-- Ann Landers

We human beings are natural clingers. We seek comfort in the knowledge of the familiar. While it is a popular and definitely true that success comes to those who hold on, long after others have given up, there are also times, when you may simply be hanging on because it is a safer, more convenient option than accepting the truth. Contradictory? Yes and no. While on a superficial level it is all but possible that a ‘formula’ or a strategy that worked at a given point of time be undertaken again and again, for success, the truth is seldom as simple. Holding on can get you success at certain times, but it can also thwart your success. Holding on may, in most cases, get you what you have been trying to achieve, so desperately, but it can also blind you from what could possibly be bigger and better things that may be waiting right at your doorstep. It’s the classic case of settling for the “good”, when there is the “best” waiting for you.

Sometimes, some of us hold on, simply because we are afraid of the unknown, clinging on to the known, the safe waters is the easiest option. Some hold on, because they cannot give up on something- anything! And sometimes, and this is the hardest, we cling on because we truly, with all our heart, believe that it will work out. This is the hardest, because, despite our best intentions, we refuse to read the writing on the wall; we prefer to not understand that this will not work out. Hard to be in this situation, when hope is all that we have and yet it seems like the best option – better than the unknown.

And then, there is the other side – the side which prefers to give up all so easily. You haven’t met those? The ones who would rather look the other way because this is too much stress or because this is too demanding. The ones who would much rather walk away from a relationship or a situation than hang in there or try and work it out. Got what i mean? The ones who believe in finding a new path where they see a curve in the current one. Don’t get me wrong, while our traditional values will scream that this is a very shallow and superficial manner in facing a situation, truth remains that some of these “walk-aways” have been the brains behind a few inventions in history and even the less famous of these “walk-aways” live happy lives as they believe they have chosen the best lives, without waiting and struggling for the good to show up! Makes sense?

So how does one choose? How does one understand the key to this discretion? Of the eternal balance between holding on or letting go? While there may be no right answers to these, there sure could be certain pointers. Given that most choices are half chances and that the success rate, no matter what you do, will always be a good 50%, there remain no right or wrong answers and definitely no generalisations. Priorities differ, expectations differ, attitudes and perceptions differ. But what remains is the power of choice. Most of us have te right to make a choice- to hold on or to let go. What we forget is that we can choose and that making a conscious, aware and discrete choice with responsibility is what seperates a successful choice from the rest.

After all, as is said: “Life is the sum of all your choices.” --Albert Camus

Have a choicest life ahead!

P.S: i am not selling anything – ANYTHING and neither preaching. Just thinking aloud.
P.P.S: the title of this post is an Instrumental from Pink Floyd's Dark Side of Moon.