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I, like many, am terribly flawed, and this hand of flaws keeps me from fully achieving the adjective of being lovely. But that’s the process, right? One of my most prevalent flaws is the inability to truly exercise composure.

Every chapter of life removes a sense of control. Each has new ups and downs. When I wandered into the new world of college I met highs that far exceeded any high I’d even dreamed about in high school, but I was also faced with low’s that dropped me lower than a younger me could have ever fathomed.

All of my lows came with some sense of a loss of control. It was something no one ever warned me of, because no one wants to talk about it. People rarely want to admit, express, or sometimes even acknowledge their lows.

No one said, “Hey, sometimes you’re going to miss your parents like crazy, but you’ll be too far away to do anything about it.” No one told me, “Some of your old friendships will fade, and you’ll work like crazy to keep them strong, but time and distance will run its course until they’re virtually strangers.” No one said, “You’ll put in desperate hours of studying, and reading, and homework, to only fall sub-par of your own expectations of yourself in that math class where the professor decides to test you on everything that he didn’t teach in class.”

People don’t typically share the lows, and in actuality we tend to forget the existence of our lows when caught in a high. And because no one told you of the lows, no one ever told you of how it turned out for them. No one is there to say, it works all out. You won’t drown.

So let me be that. Let me be that person who’s been there. Let me tell you about it all. My chapters are fewer than many, and only bring me to slightly past adolescence, but they’re full so far. I’ve felt near suffocation with a lifetime of weight piling onto my twenty-year young body. And let me be the voice to say, that in the end of it all when the day is over, you will find yourself in a position of being completely and utterly okay.

“When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, Let it be.”

Let It Be was written when Paul McCartney first found out the Beatles were breaking up. Mary was his mom. She came to him in a dream and simply said, as you may well guess, “let it be.”

And maybe that’s where we mess up. Maybe that’s how life ultimately controls us. When we refuse to simply “let it be.”

There are so many things that I’ve had to let be, as I’m sure you have, because we really don’t have control, and that’s when I lose my composure. I can’t stand to not have the grip. I rarely choose to shift the sail. Instead I waste my breath and energy trying to change the wind.

I’ll never change the wind.

And even if I don’t want to touch the sail, there is something to be said about just going. Letting the wind carry you. Letting your hardships be a chapter of your life, no matter how much it hurts to reread. Letting hardships and struggles make you stronger, and letting them be.

Ask anyone who knows me. I am FAR from mastering this gift.

School is hard. Sometimes I work so hard, and fall short of expectations. But I need to let that be.

Relationships are hard, and at times I can lose control, and in my fight to regain a sense of it I can hurt the people close to me. Sometimes in a relationship the best thing you can do is simply let it be, let things play out.

I don’t have the answer. I can’t tell you how to gain composure. But I think the words “let it be” are decent instruction, and I truly think they have done volumes in my own life. I do encourage you to choose your battles, especially the ones with yourself. And I challenge you to learn when you can control the winds, and if you can without hurting people, then DO IT! But sometimes life is simply life, and the only way to live it is to let it be.

Photograph by: Julia Holladay