Maybe Don’t Let It Go

I think we’re being told to let too many things go.

Yesterday I sat in a room and listened to Scott Yoo, host of the PBS series Now Hear This, talk about what it takes to become a musician. He should know. He's a master violinist and the chief conductor of the Mexico City Philharmonic Orchestra.

He didn’t dress it up. He laid it out with unexpected humor those early years when he didn't want to pratice, the impact of family upheaval— the truth that the only reason he really started practicing was to win prize money at a Brazilian Music Festival so he could buy a car. He really dug into that prize money. And the car his 16 year old self HAD to have. He talked about what it took to prepare himself for the moment of truth.

He talked about repetition. Attention to detail. The kind of focus that bordered on obsession. He talked about his stopwatch and his practice sessions that sometimes stretched into the wee hours of the morning. He painted a picure of the dog-with-a-bone refusal to move on until the music was understood down to its last vibrating note.

And then he kept circling one question: Do you let it go?

At first it sounded almost obvious. Like permission. So many voices whisper to us— just let it go— just keep moving—it'll be fine.

Do you let the missed note go. Do you let the sloppy passage slide. Do you let the moment pass when you could have stopped… and fixed it.

And the more he talked, the more his question started to turn. Because what he was really asking was:

Where do you allow yourself to stay comfortable?

It made me think of Mel Robbins and that whole idea—let them. Let people do what they do. Let things fall where they fall. There’s freedom in that. But Scott Yoo's conversation? It was starting to feel like the inverse. Because if we are trying to become something—anything—there are places where letting it go isn’t freedom. It’s drift.

It’s the moment you decide not to look too closely. Not to press. Not to ask more of yourself.

And I found myself sitting there thinking— maybe the life we actually want is built in those exact moments. The ones where it would be easier to shrug and move on. But we don’t. We stop. We look again. We stay with it longer than we want to. We don’t let it go.

And I’m wondering this morning— as I sit here in the great windy city of Chicago, drinking hotel coffee and trying to decide if I can go one more day without washing my hair—

Where in your life are you letting something go… that might deserve a second look?