Learning to Let Go

Every New Year, many resolutions come to mind to try to guide me and provide focus for the year ahead. Now, as I approach the pre-retirement period of my life, I have chosen to learn and relearn how to let go.

I realize that I have to let go of my fantasies, let go of my fears, let go of so many things that seem essential in the moment yet represent nothing more than attachments to the past.

For example, I have justified not wanting to think about retirement because I have continued to feel that my patients need me so much that it would not be fair to leave them. Yet as I examined my feelings deeply, I realized that it is my attachment to my patients and my need for those relationships that drive my feelings. I need to let go of these feelings of power, these feelings of wanting to be in control, this need to be needed.

It is from the realization that I am enough, just as I am at this stage in life, that I can still love my patients and contribute to their lives without dedicating a hundred percent of my time to clinical care, that equanimity and happiness will join hands.

Fernando Camacho
Bronx, New York