Goines On: Letting go

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While reading an interview about “giving advice that a person can hear,” Goines wondered how the person being interviewed might advise him on something he was contemplating doing.
    He had been worrying about why a few friends had at some point in their correspondence just stopped replying and gone distant on him. How could he ask them why they had abandoned him without driving them farther away? What could he ask them, how might he put the questions?
    Had they decided they didn’t like him? What was it about him that had offended them? What had he said or done?
    How could he ask questions like that in a way that encouraged them to answer, and do it honestly?
    He contacted the interviewee to see whether she could suggest ways to phrase the questions he wanted to ask. Had she dealt with such a situation before? Had she herself ever asked someone to tell her what they didn’t like about her?
    Her reply surprised Goines:

I would not be comfortable advising anyone on this. In my own case, if I sense that my behavior is not working for someone, I review my behavior and try to improve, but I leave it there, I don’t linger on it. I let it go, give it time, let it breathe. Often, what I think I sense has nothing to do with me. It was the weather or something that didn’t pertain to me at all. I wouldn’t go opening cans of worms.

    The firmness of this person’s advice gave Goines pause. He realized she was right. He himself had at some point stopped replying to a number of friends for reasons unrelated to them. Things had come up, the items on his to-do list had had to be prioritized, whatever they had been discussing seemed to have become over and done with, or he had just ended up forgetting.
    But what if some of the friends he had “gone distant on” were having the same concerns about him that he had been having about friends who had gone distant on him? Didn’t he owe them an apology, some reassurance that it hadn’t been their fault, they had done nothing wrong, had not offended him?
    Goines set about trying to identify friends to reassure. A few names came easily, cousins he hadn’t reached out to for a long time, old work colleagues, someone he used to go on seasonal walks with, a couple he and Mrs. Goines used to visit and be visited by…Maybe he could identify others by examining his old emails….
    But what about those he had gone distant on so long ago than he no longer had the relevant emails? (He regularly eased the burden on his storage by deleting a year or two of email.)
    Goines suddenly imagined the interviewee overhearing his thoughts and shaking her head. He imagined her telling him not to open those cans of worms either. Those friends understand too, as you now understand: life goes on, people’s paths go separate ways. There’s nothing to forgive or reassure. Let it go. Just be as good as you can be.
    Goines let out a lungful of relief. He did have a lot else to do, and many friends he was in close correspondence with. He must concentrate on being good with them.

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