Dead Wood Doesn’t Grow.

Time doesn’t heal emotional pain, you need to learn how to let go. ― Roy T. Bennett

Even the wildest of angers and harshest of bitterness can be useful for a relative period of time… such emotions can be harnessed quite easily to drive and power us through incredibly challenging life circumstance. A small gap of opportunity in time afforded to take something that could very well destroy us to our core, utilise it, turn it on its head and own it. This may sound ridiculous, but powerful negative emotions are quite easily converted from destructive to constructive when you take the time to break it all down into the energy of it all.

…but every negative emotion has an expiration date for its constructive use case and once that time has passed it is not only no longer useful, but becomes destructive too — toxic. It will literally feed on you from the inside out. Break you down and eat away, bit by bit at every single good part of who you truly are — often until there is nothing left. The key, the art of it all is to use it whilst it is actually useful, recognise when it is becoming venomous and then — to let it go.

The truth is something that burns. It burns off dead wood. And people don’t like having the dead wood burnt off, often because they’re 95 percent dead wood. - Jordan Peterson

The outcome of hanging onto it is never pretty. People who have nothing left of themselves generally turn to those around them — belittle, bully and break them down. It is the only way they have left to feel better about themselves — more often than not, stopping at little to nothing to get their “fix” for that hole inside themselves which unknowingly continues to grow because it simply has not been addressed, acknowledged. What most people fail to realise is that you can ACKNOWLEDGE negative emotion without giving it any power over you.

My mom used to say often ”Let it move straight through you”. It took me a little while to truly grasp what she meant by this — but I did eventually… and she was spot on! See it for what it is, be mature enough to recognize it — speak to it if you have to… tell it that it has no place in your life nor mind and then, let it go ”through you”.

Negative emotions are like waves — they rise up to their peak and then fall and fade away. We avoid negative emotions because they feel so bad, but also because they can sometimes feel like they will stay forever. We can become afraid that that sadness and loneliness or fear represents “reality” and that once we give into it that is what our life will be like. The truth is, when you open up to your negative emotions, they will come and they will go.” - 7Cups

We cannot truly live until we have learnt to let go of the things which continually pull us back down to our knees. We cannot go through life ignoring the things which are eating us up from the inside out. These emotions, hurts and angers need to be accepted — responded to. They are not there for no reason. Ignoring wounds of such depth is what causes generational patterns of abuse, violence, neglect and a truck load of other stuff. Life is FULL of lessons and signs, we simply have to pay attention to them.

If a plant is neglected for any period of time it will gain “dead wood”. Sure, you can leave that dead wood there and begin watering the plant again and it will sprout new shoots — but the plant continues to expend its energies not only on the new growth, but the dead too. So, you CUT the dead wood away so that it can pour more energy into the new growth. Simple really isn’t it.

I have long since learnt to harness negativity and toil it into something constructive and positive, to let go of it when needed and most importantly to learn the life lesson handed to me on that unpolished silver platter.

The greatest step towards a life of simplicity is to learn to let go. - Steve Maraboli