Why Moving On Takes Time?
Moving on in life is the easiest advice to give but the hardest to follow. When you are committed to something or someone, it's hard to get away from it. Because it consumes your very fabric of existence. It governs your thoughts. It encapsulates your entire personality. People can look at you and tell you are devoted to something or someone.
That's why breakups and divorce physically change people. We have all moved on from something we thought we never would. And yet we don't remember the template we used. It rests in our subconscious without us noticing. It will surface when you need it most. The mind is a funny organ that way. It knows how to protect you from every tragedy. It will fill you with all sorts of garbage and biases, but it will protect you. At any cost.
Moving away feels hard because we don't know how to deal with absence. A person who has worked for years on a startup and then has to shut it down goes through the same phase as someone leaving a marriage. The relationship gave comfort regardless of how much it consumed them. The absence of struggle is sometimes also the reason for a mental breakdown.
The mind thrives in struggle. It hurts when you are in it, but the mind is most active during that phase. I am speaking in purely clinical terms here. Of course it hurts. Of course it's hard to manage the routine. But think of the sudden drop in all that struggle. It feels like relief initially, but then you have to redesign your life all over again. And that's where the pain lies.
When you were attached to someone, you cannot deal with their absence. You have to figure out a new routine. A new way of living. A new thinking process. It is this rewiring of the brain that takes time. It requires reasoning. Sitting with that reasoning. Letting go of the hate and anger. And then reasoning your way to contentment.
You cannot move on in your life if you haven't dealt with absence. If you haven't worked through this intense yearning for somebody or something. If you are struggling to move on from somebody, you don't need more hatred directed at that person. You need to deal with the absence you feel without them.
You need to rewire your brain with a new thinking model. You need to see your life without them. Even though you haven't imagined it yet. This act of imagining is the work you have to do. This is the rewiring your brain needs, and you have to provide it. And this is the rewiring that takes time.
Apply the balm of poetry, anger, tears. But in the end you need to replace the mental model you've been living by. You need to adopt new templates. You need to discover new avenues for meaning. You need to rebuild your personality, armed with everything you now know, without letting the world turn you bitter.
Moving on feels hard because rebuilding yourself is hard. It takes time, directed effort, and constant nudging to train your mind into a new way of thinking.