They say it’s like ripping off a band-aid – but I am here to tell you it’s nothing like ripping off a band-aid. When you rip off a band-aid it stings for about 2 seconds, you rub it, then forget it was even there. Real goodbyes from real community are more raw than that – it’s like losing a limb and still reaching for items you know you can’t grab anymore.
And before you think I am being dramatic let me back this up with science.
As humans we were made to live in community, so much so that our minds are physically limited to how much they can remember on their own, they must then rely on the memory of other people’s brains for information not easily recalled. This is called Transactive Memory – meaning a lot of what we remember is actually stored outside of our brains. Last summer I read The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell where he goes over this theory stating, “When people know each other well, they create an implicit joint memory system – a transactive memory system – which is based on an understanding about who is best suited to remember what kinds of things.” He goes on to say “it is the loss of this kind of joint memory that helps to make divorce so painful… The loss of transactive memory feels like losing a part of one’s own mind.”
YOUR MIND LITERALLY FEELS THE ABSENCE OF YOUR CLOSE COMMUNITY – ouch!!
(more on transactive memory here if you’re interested)
However, this post is the art of saying goodbye not the science of saying goodbye, but I brought up the idea of transactive memory to better convey why saying “goodbye” is hard in the first place – it truly is like having a phantom limb.
When your friend is going home after a sleepover there’s a feeling like you never want them to leave or that there should be a grand exit to mark the ending of your meeting – however in reality goodbye is much more lack luster. It is simply allowing the other person to walk out the door. Day to day goodbyes are not as difficult because your mind knows that if you need something from them they are a call and a 15 min drive away. However when you’re leaving the country for a year – saying goodbye really means ‘goodbye’ for possibly the first time ever.
How am I then supposed to cope with losing all my transactive memory at once, all my limbs, all my community – completely detaching from everything I know?
A former racer posted this about leaving the race “you cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place?”
This is a question I started asking when (at 5 years old) my once beloved Coney Island (my beta fish) passed away and my grandma got my little sister a gold fish at the fair. She asked if I wanted one but I just mocked my younger sister saying “why even get the fish it is just going to die in 2 days” (obviously I had some super traumatic heart issues to address at the time) I continued to struggled with the idea of creating something important that eventually had an end point. Whether that be relationships, goals, or simply buying a fish – to me it was all pointless if eventually I was going to be left with nothing.
But Mary Curran (The WR alumni) continued
“…just this: what is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.”
Sometimes I want to curse goodbyes and the thought of leaving loved ones behind but I am reminded that having something to say goodbye to is a testament that we were once on “the summit” and it is time to come down, however I have the memories of the people I leave that allow me to live my life differently.
So whether you’re going to college, dropping your kid off at college, leaving for the world race, or recently losing a loved one – know that the goodbye hurts, it always will, there is no solution to losing part of ourselves (LITERALLY PART OF OUR MINDS), however we can go on living with the memory of the people who inspire us and allow us to have goodbyes that hurt. If they didn’t hurt I’d be worried that you weren’t allowing yourself to truly sit on the summit – I promise the sunrise looks way better from up there.
Yes – this is a very long goodbye but I have no doubt we will be back on the summit in no time.
Looking-up-at-the-mountain-smiling,
El
This blog post is dedicated to all my friends and family who make leaving a little harder, but life tremendously better.
