The Physics of Letting Go
On Impermanence, Memory, Loss, and the Weird Weight of Time
Listen While You Read: “Entering Lumon” — Theodore Shapiro, ODESZA
Letting go is not a lifestyle trend. It’s not the glossy Instagram carousel with beige backgrounds and minimalist fonts telling you to “release what no longer serves you.” No. Letting go is physics.
It’s entropy, decay, the slow fade of Polaroids left in the sun. It’s your body remembering a touch your mind insists it’s over. It’s the universe itself expanding toward heat death.
And here you are, clinging to the rope like a child on the monkey bars, blistered palms refusing to accept the inevitable: gravity has always had the last word.
The physics of letting go is not about transcendence. It’s about falling properly.
THE MEMORY PARADOX
Memory is an unreliable narrator. It edits, splices, burns reels of film, then plays them back with the brightness all wrong. A smell triggers a whole season of your life, but distorted, as if you’re watching yourself from across a foggy parking lot.
The brain, that neurotic archivist, hoards the unimportant and misplaces the sacred. Your first heartbreak: blurry. The color of the soda machine in your middle school cafeteria: crystal clear.
Impermanence laughs in the face of memory. It knows you’ll keep trying to build shrines to moments, and it knows the shrine will rot faster than the moment itself.
Spellbreak: When the memory loops too loud, step outside. Put your hand on something that is undeniably here—a brick wall, a dog’s head, a patch of dirt. Whisper: This is now. The rest is rehearsal.
THE WEIGHT OF TIME
Time is not linear—it’s heavy. It sits on the chest like an iron cat, purring smugly as you beg for breath.
You carry versions of yourself like nesting dolls: child-you crying in a hallway, teenage-you scribbling in margins, twenty-something-you burning out in bars, now-you staring at a glowing screen reading this sentence.
Each doll rattles. Each doll demands airtime. You call it nostalgia. I call it gravitational drag.
The physics of letting go is acknowledging that time is not a river you’re floating down. It’s luggage you’re forced to carry. The trick is learning how to check a bag at the cosmic gate.
Soul Flare: “Time doesn’t heal—it hoards. You heal when you start charging storage fees.”
LOSSES WITH RECEIPTS
Every loss you think you’ve metabolized leaves receipts in the body. A tight shoulder. A recurring dream. A sudden ache when a song from 2009 comes on in a grocery store.
Capitalism has no mercy here either: it’s not just your grief, it’s interest accrued. You didn’t just lose the person—you lost every imagined future with them, too. The ghost of vacations never taken, babies never born, houses never furnished with secondhand couches.
And the cruelest trick? You don’t even lose them all at once. They evaporate slow, like water on a sidewalk. Years later, you’ll suddenly realize you don’t remember the shape of their handwriting, and it will feel like a fresh amputation.
Letting go is never clean. It’s a layaway plan.
IMPERMANENCE IS A BULLY
Impermanence doesn’t knock politely. It kicks the door down, rips posters off your wall, and demands you get used to the draft.
The Buddhists try to sell impermanence as liberation—“nothing lasts, therefore don’t cling.” Sounds noble, until you’re watching your grandmother forget your name or standing at the edge of a city swallowed by water.
Impermanence doesn’t feel like freedom. It feels like theft.
And yet—the theft is also the invitation. If nothing lasts, then nothing owns you either.
Spellbreak: Next time something breaks—your favorite mug, your plans, your illusions—say out loud: It was never mine. I just got to borrow it.
MICRO-LETTING-GOS
You don’t only let go of big things like lovers, cities, or parents. You let go daily, in increments:
The version of yourself that thought today would go differently.
The thought you had in the shower that was brilliant but dissolved before you found a pen.
The stranger’s smile you didn’t return before the light turned green.
These micro-deaths pile up. You ignore them until one day you’re staring at a mirror, unsure where all the versions went.
The physics says: every micro-letting-go is practice for the macro. Every dropped call prepares you for the final hang-up.
Soul Flare: “Life is a rehearsal for death disguised as errands.”
CULTURAL CRITIQUE CORNER
We live in a hoarders’ empire. Our culture worships possession, permanence, legacy. Cloud storage for your selfies, cryogenics for your billionaires, entire industries dedicated to convincing you that if you buy this serum, your face won’t betray you.
Impermanence is the enemy of capitalism because it refuses to be monetized. You can’t bottle the ache of an ex’s sweater or the silence after the last note of a concert.
But the empire tries anyway. It sells you nostalgia playlists, “Forever” tattoos, archival-quality photo albums. It whispers: maybe you don’t have to let go.
The physics says otherwise. No empire, no empire song, no empire product outpaces the entropy of the grave.
THE COSMIC JOKE
Here’s the part no one tells you: letting go is not final. You think you’ve surrendered. You think you’ve unclenched your fist. And then—out of nowhere—the ghost of a laugh, a scent, a sentence, ambushes you.
Letting go is not one act. It’s a choreography. Forward, back. Open, close. Grasp, release.
The cosmic joke is this: you will never “arrive” at being free of the past. The past is stitched into your bones. The best you can do is learn how to dance with its ghosts without mistaking them for lovers.
CLOSING INCANTATION
The physics of letting go is not about becoming light. It’s about learning to carry your heaviness differently.
Sometimes you drop the bag. Sometimes you drag it. Sometimes you wear it like a crown.
Impermanence will keep bullying, memory will keep glitching, time will keep pulling—all of that is guaranteed.
But you? You get to choose how to participate in the physics experiment.
So loosen your grip. Let gravity have its fun. Fall properly.
GLOSSARY / SOUL-INDEX
Entropy: The universal law that says everything tends toward mess. Also your laundry situation.
Gravitational Drag: The sensation of your past selves weighing you down like unpaid debt.
Micro-Letting-Gos: Tiny, daily surrenders that prep you for the big ones.
Layaway Grief: Loss that keeps charging interest, long after the initial event.
Spellbreak: Practical action to snap yourself out of spirals.
SOUL FLARES
“Time doesn’t heal—it hoards. You heal when you start charging storage fees.”
“Life is a rehearsal for death disguised as errands.”
“Impermanence isn’t freedom until you stop mistaking theft for loss.”
“Letting go isn’t one act—it’s choreography with your ghosts.”
If this hit you in the ribs—share it. Let someone else know they’re not crazy for feeling the past tug like a jealous lover.
Let go of expecting anything out of letting go… including liberation itself. There must be a full acceptance that anything can happen, including the failure of letting go. That is true letting go.