Ah, so: The Art of Letting Go

For our blog post this month, let me start by telling you a short story.

In a small village, a girl became pregnant by a local fisherman. Because she did not want to cause problems for the fisherman, so she lied and said that she became pregnant by a monk who lived in the monastery up on the hill.

When the baby was born, the girl became ill and the townspeople carried the baby up the hill to the monastery. They knocked angrily on the gate, and the monk opened the door. They said to the monk, ‘This is your baby – you raise it. What kind of a phony monk are you?’

And the monk said, ‘Ah, so’, and he took the baby, and he closed the gate. The monk’s whole life changed just like that, because of someone else's lie, something he had nothing to do with, and yet he didn't lose his nerve, he didn't get upset.

Nine years later the girl (the child’s mother) was dying. She didn’t want to die without admitting what had happened, so she told the people of the village, ‘I’m sorry, but I lied. It really wasn’t the monk, it was the fisherman.’

The villagers went up to the monastery, and they knocked on the door. The monk opened the gate,
and there standing next to him was this nine-year-old child.

The villagers said, ‘We’ve made a terrible mistake. This isn’t your child after all. We’ll take him back down to the village to raise him, and you’re free to go back to your monastic life.’ 

And the monk said, ‘Ah, so.’ 

________________________________________________________________________

You might be thinking, ‘What?! Everyone can come and do me wrong, and I’m just supposed to say ‘ah, so’?’

The point of this story is not to encourage numbness or avoidance. It does not teach us to let people walk all over us, but rather that we can create our own circumstances of happiness or suffering. More specifically, “The gap between what is happening and what we want is the reason we feel unhappy” (Eldad Ben-Moshe, 2020). When reality doesn’t match our expectations, it creates tension— tension that often shows up as anxiety, frustration, sadness, or anger.

For example, think of something that brings you any negative emotion; a fight with your partner, a speeding ticket, etc. Then, gently ask yourself the following questions: Why am I feeling this way? What happened? And then, What would I have wanted instead?

You’ll usually find that the discomfort isn’t just about the situation itself—but about how far it is from what you hoped, expected, or needed it to be. Now, this doesn’t mean that your feelings, worries, dissapointment, etc. aren’t valid. Rather, our story highlights that we may get attached to how we feel things should have gone for us, and when our expectations aren’t met, it’s less of what actually happened that hurts the most, but our attachment to a more fruitful outcome.

TLDR: “Ah, so” isn’t about pretending things don’t matter or that negative outcomes don’t hurt us. Instead, it’s about about loosening our grip on how things are supposed to go. If we know anything about life, it’s that it tends to be unpredictable, sometimes uncomfortable and unfair. But meeting every moment with resistance will lead to a deeper wound.

Although many things in life are completely out of our control, we can help ourselves to take each day as it comes. We can pause, notice and respond, instead of reacting.

Ah, so—this is what’s here right now.