Dropping resistance - letting go

Sometimes, you may find yourself resisting something, figuratively speaking. Like you resist your bodyweight down in the eccentric phase of a pushup, slowly lowering down until going back up again against gravity and its downward push.

There is value in resisting gravity or entropy—the default tendency of things toward chaos. There is also value in letting go of resistance. It depends on the context and your desired outcome in the specific situation.

Choosing to resist or let go of resistance depends significantly on your final aim. Your aim is nested within multiple levels. There is your proximal aim (your current tangible goal, the direction you are following in life), which is part of a larger aim (the life you want to build), which is nested within a higher target (your role and impact in the world), and so on until the highest level of abstraction possible, which often ends up in faith or other supra-human territory that can't be quite grasped tangibly.

We aim up—or at least that seems to be your best bet if you were to choose—virtually infinitely until we die. That seems to be a fundamental condition of humans. We know psychologists have coined the concept of hedonic adaptation—the tendency to aim toward a goal, reach it, get used to it very quickly, and repeat the process—which is sometimes used as a pejorative term that symbolizes the restlessness and never-ending dissatisfaction within humans.

Another way to interpret hedonic adaptation is that it is a positive phenomenon and inherently built into each of us—the fundamental purpose of living for humans is to constantly define targets, achieve them, and continue defining new targets all over again. Aiming up is a symbolism many traditions use to mean improvement, renewal, progress. Mountains are up, and many people are attracted to the idea and practice of climbing mountains. One possible psychological explanation is that this inherent mechanism makes us constantly seek upward motion.

This is a blessing and a curse at the same time. A blessing because the sense of aiming up and progressing provides great fulfillment—the sense of meaning, joy, and satisfaction. A curse because our default mode network skews toward negativity and is always pointing out the negative and threats in the environment instead of highlighting its positive aspects. So, we have developed this concept of gratitude to balance that out. Gratitude is an intentional exercise (i.e., driven by the prefrontal cortex instead of the limbic brain) that can be practiced and enhanced through experience. But you have to remind yourself of that because the default mode is to be drawn into negativity and fear losses more than appreciating triumphs.

Gratitude is also a practice in letting go of the grip of desires. And letting go is the other aspect of the seesaw of life, where aiming up seems necessary for feeling alive and well, while sometimes aiming up requires dropping the tension around a specific situation, or the whole process of upward aim for that matter. It's yin and yang, chaos and order, water and fire. It's linear movement and central alignment, as in many yoga practices, and fluid, free-flowing, multi-directional movement like some martial arts and dance. It's a constant practice and a game worth playing.