How different would the world feel if the Beatles had written Let It Go instead of Let It Be?
Picture it: Paul at the piano, eyes closed, singing earnestly,
“Let it go, let it go, let it go…”
The song still tops the charts, but the message shifts.
A generation grows up believing peace requires action, that freedom means pushing, fixing, or flinging off a few metaphorical gloves.
Fast-forward a few decades, and Disney’s Frozen releases Let It Be.
Elsa steps onto the balcony, takes a breath, and simply waits.
The snow falls, the world keeps spinning, and somewhere nearby, a snowman is very happy. ☃️
It wouldn’t have made for a dramatic anthem, but it might have made for a peaceful life.
Because “let it go” still carries the energy of doing, a subtle attempt to control or manage what’s already happening.
“Let it be,” on the other hand, asks nothing of us.
It’s the wisdom of non-doing, of allowing things to unfold on their own time.
Letting go says, I need to do something about this. Letting be says, Maybe I don’t.
And that small shift, from doing to allowing, is where peace begins to take shape.
As Sharon Salzberg reminds us:
“Doing nothing means unplugging from the compulsion to always keep ourselves busy… the tension of trying to manipulate our experience before we even fully acknowledge what that experience is.”
Maybe that’s what the Beatles were really singing about all along, not a command to fix, but an invitation to rest.
🎵 Let it be. 🎵
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