Let It Go
Indiana….Indiana….let it go.
- Henry Jones, Sr. The Last Crusade
We all have stuff we experience or have had and lost that we got to let go. And when I say let “it” go, I’m referring to that one thing you can’t get over. Either it’s a person, job, a place, a memory, an incident, etc. It was a memorable, cherished thing, or a a source of anger and frustration. Whatever it is, it’s something you haven’t moved on from.
The quote above of course comes from the classic Last Crusade. Indiana Jones is trying to get the Holy Grail as an ancient church is collapsing around them. His gal-turned-Nazis-turned-opportunist has already fallen into the abyss after failing to reach it and losing her grip.
The film hints that Indiana is succumbing to the same obsessive desire to get the Grail, which he can almost reach.
That’s when his father tells him to let it go. That statement is made all the more powerful by the fact that the father made the search for the Grail his life obsession, to the point of neglecting his own only child.
The Grail in that sense represents a source of separation between the father and son, and by both of them letting it go they’re able to fully reconcile their relationship, something both desired but were prior unable to do.
I touched on this in prior posts, but Mal Reynolds doesn’t suffer from this or feel tempted to hold onto something from his past throughout the Firefly series. His side lost the war, and he let it go as much as one could expect a man to do so. He makes offhand remarks about the war, but doesn’t want to bring it back up. For him, letting “it” go meant moving beyond a lost fight.
People who don’t let it go develop what’s called “ressentiment,” a term coined by the philosopher Nietzsche. To describe it plainly, it’s where someone blames a person or group for the cause of all their problems and are the reason why the individual can’t get what they want in life.
But in reality it’s an excuse, even if there are legitimate grievances, and in some cases they are more severe than others.
However, ressentiment is defined by its passivity and lack of meaningful action to change a situation. It’s a form of self-emasculation disguised as self-righteousness. Like narcissism, it is rooted in a victimhood identity. This is for people who have the power to change their circumstances, but refuse to do so because it would violate their perception of themselves.
It’s a variation of the Scooby-Doo line “I would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for you meddling kids!”
A more somber comparison comes from the critically underrated Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. Before he becomes Batman, Bruce Wayne falls in love with a woman named Andrea Beaumont and plans to marry her, but she and her father are forced to flee overseas to escape crime lords whom they owe money. Eventually the mob bosses track down her father and kill him.
Bruce, of course, knows nothing of this beyond a small note from Andrea saying she’s broken off the engagement and leaving Gotham. The incident convinces him to become Batman, while Andrea returns to Gotham years later and begins killing the crime lords one by one in revenge - but not just for her father’s murder.
When she’s finally confronted by Batman about the killings, she says “look what they did to us, what we could have had! They had to pay!”
Did Batman find Serenity? One could argue either way - or that he realized for him there is no Serenity - but he’s not driven by ressentiment.
Ressentiment is an essential part of every Lost Cause movement. It’s important to make a distinction between lost causes and people who simply remember something or memorialize it as a form of respect. Whether it applies to just one person’s life or an entire group, a Lost Cause is an identity and shapes the narrative of a person’s life in a way that they never progress or move past something.
This is in contrast with nostalgia, which looks back fondly on the past but in a way that also impedes progress because it’s a rejection of the present.
Mal Reynolds was a sergeant in a rebel force and certainly believed in the cause he fought for, but one it was over and done it was no longer a part of his life. He still wears the browncoat he got during the war, but that’s a personal memento. Inasmuch as he felt perpetually trapped inside Serenity Valley in a metaphysical sense, the truth is he made the most one could expect of the situation. He didn’t spend the rest of his life fighting a war that had been already fought lost, and he didn’t spend all his time obsessing over the Alliance (the winning side) even as it meddled in his affairs.
At the same time, it was easier for Reynolds to move on than it may be for you or others. Reynolds had no one holding him back. His war buddy Zoe didn’t constantly try to keep him welded to the past, nor does any other character. As opposed to Michael Corleone’s unsuccessful attempts to get out of the Mafia for good, the delineation between Reynold’s former life and current life was clear and distinct because it wasn’t a drawn out process.
As I’ve discussed before, Spike Spiegel in Cowboy Bebop never lets “it” go, in this case a future that was supposed to be but never was - yet his situation is more complicated. He keeps running into former enemies as part of his bounty hunting. He also has his romantic interest Julia die in his arms after being shot by the same gang he used to work for. Spike had a choice to let it go and didn’t, but it wasn’t as cut and dry as Mal.
The unpleasant truth is that the most difficult part of letting “it” go may not be you, but others in your life.
That’s why you must be on the lookout for others who may claim to also be looking for Serenity (obviously they’re not going to call it that, but you get the point) but haven’t let “it” go because they’re filled with ressentiment. That matters, because misery loves miserable company. They won’t want you to let “it” go, either. If you do, you start taking action that pulls you apart.