Last summer on a very bad day, I attended the funeral of an affable, older relative whom I hadn’t seen in a long time. Distracted by problems at work, I made a wrong turn and arrived just as the priest was finishing the Gospel that is usually read at funeral Masses. In it, Jesus says, “I am the Resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me. though he were dead, yet shall he live, and whoever so lives and believes in me shall never die” — complementary, mirror-image phrases, like so many throughout the New Testament, that Charles Dickens uses to brilliant effect in the denouement of his French Revolutionary novel of dissipation and redemption, “A Tale of Two Cities.”
We die in many ways, the priest went on to say in his sermon. We die to our possessions, to our careers.
Then he said something that stopped me cold. “The hardest thing,” he said, “is to let go.”
Just then, the sun broke through the rose window behind him and I thought, I could just let go right now of all my problems. Just let them go and be free.
Letting go is particularly hard to do when you have so much, as many of us in America do. (It’s probably why Jesus also said, “It’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” That’s not because rich people are bad per se, but because it’s hard when you have a lot not to want to keep it and acquire even more. If one handbag is lovely, two must be twice as nice. Nothing is ever enough.
Power is even more like that. The reason power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, as Lord Acton observed, is not because powerful people are any worse than rich people. Indeed, money and power can be used for great good. But power corrupts because it’s all about the maintenance of power and the attainment of more. As Martina Navratilova said, when you’re the number one tennis player in the world, you can only continue to be the number one tennis player. There’s nowhere else to go. At some point, power is like that. You’re treading water. And there are plenty of people just waiting for you to get tired of treading water.
We saw that with the recent return of Sen. Diane Feinstein to Washington, D.C., after a bout of shingles. At 89 and reportedly suffering from cognitive impairment, she looks like a battered shell of her former self. Many have called for her to step down to be replaced by another younger, presumably steadier Democratic senator as her absence has put the Democrats razor-thin hold on the Senate in jeopardy, particularly on crucial judicial votes.
But I don’t want to make this post about Feinstein’s need to let go. For her, it’s clearly not just about power and perks. It’s about identity. Being a senator isn’t what she does. It’s who she is. Separating her from that job is going to be like shedding a skin.
Some have let go of power gracefully. Think of George Washington stepping down after two terms as president and setting a precedent that was broken only by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s wartime leadership. John Quincy Adams returned to Congress after one term as president. Jimmy Carter went on to philanthropic work.
In our own time, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seems content to be a back-bencher, although that might be because she’s still in the game. Others have demonstrated that not only won’t they let go but that they will crush anyone who stands in their way of regaining or attaining the summit. Let’s be frank here: However fine former Gov. Asa Hutchinson and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott may be, however feisty former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley is, they will never get the Republican presidential nomination. It’s going to come down to former President Donald J. Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and that’s going to be like a Florida gator going after a boa constrictor. It’s going to get very ugly very fast.
After some serious missteps (Disney, Ukraine as a “territorial dispute”), DeSantis has sought to position himself as the more moral Trump, complimenting — and complementing — wife Casey in Iowa and on Mother’s Day while Trump skipped Iowa (he’s never good in the rain, a hair thing) and then forgot Melania in a long Mother’s Day ramble about leftist fascists. (Holiday messages are also not a Trump thing. Remember the Fourth of July Revolutionary War airports speech?)
Trump, who is once again being sued by E. Jean Carroll for doubling down on the very statements he was held liable for, has had some explosive, contradictory things to say about DeSantis. He can’t let go. But then, neither can DeSantis with Disney, which has pulled the plug on a plan that would mean $1 billion and 2,000 more jobs to Florida. Trump and DeSantis always have to win and that means someone else must lose. But ironically, in winning, they’ve lost, too.
That’s the thing about not letting go: Life often forces open the hand that’s squeezing the sand so hard it’s slipping through the fingers anyway.
In “A Tale of Two Cities,” Sydney Carton lets go of his anger, fear, depression and dissipation to sacrifice his life for the happiness of a woman he loves but who will never be his. On Memorial Day, we’ll remember those who gave “the last full measure of devotion,” as Abraham Lincoln called it, to their country.
But you don’t have to die to let go. You just have to die to yourself. Rock legend Tina Turner, who passed away Wednesday, May 24, at age 83, walked out on her abusive husband, Ike Turner, with .36 cents in her pocket and a gas card. She struggled. But eventually she found her footing and a better life.
When you let go of whatever it is that’s stopping you from being your best self, you often find, to paraphrase Dickens’ Sydney Carton that it is a far, far better thing you do than you have ever done.