Letting Go, Sending Away, and Laying Down: Testimonies of Human Freedom and Suffering

Soyo Existential Ethics – Essay 27

Testimonies of Human Freedom and Suffering

Preface

“Human existence is, in its essence, a free soul. Yet we struggle endlessly because we cannot let go, cannot send away, and cannot lay down the burdens of life. This essay is a philosophical confession that seeks to reclaim the dignity of human existence amid death, numbness, and a society that too easily forgets.”

The Three Paths of Personhood

When is the depth of human personhood most clearly revealed? Not when one succeeds, nor when one possesses much. Rather, personhood is fulfilled in letting go, sending away, and laying down.

Letting go is to release the desire to possess and to set the other free.

Sending away is the confession of love that releases the one we hold with clenched hands.

Laying down is the surrender of life’s unbearable weight into the hands of God.

Yet humanity constantly struggles against these three paths. We cling instead of releasing, suffer instead of sending away, and collapse under the weight instead of laying it down. In this struggle, we find no rest, and life is bound in the snares of possession and attachment.

But Soyo Existential Ethics declares the human being is, at its core, a free soul. True freedom is not found in endless possession, but in letting go, sending away, and laying down. In this lies the maturity of personhood and the liberation of existence.

Confronting Death

I once heard that a neighbor, with whom I often spoke in childhood, ended his life by suicide. I heard the story of two lovers who chose to leave the world together. I knew of others who, unable to bear the weight of life, gave everything up and departed.

These deaths are not mere private choices. They testify to the unbearable weight and depth of human existence. Yet we so often consume such news as a fleeting headline: shocked for a moment and then forgetting.

“That is not my life.”

This thought hardens our hearts, numbs our minds, and erases the dignity of existence. In a society where even death is consumed and forgotten, the value of human life steadily fades.

The Social Structure of Numbness

Modern society trains us in numbness. Through unending competition and efficiency, even death becomes another metric, another media product. People are startled, and then they forget. Suffering does not even have time to be felt before it is pushed away as an “event to be forgotten.”

This is the structure of numbness. We live within a society that has lost the ability to feel the pain of human existence. And this is not only the fault of systems or media it is also the choice of human beings who, in order to survive, numb themselves, turn away from death, and harden their own sensitivity.

Yet such numbness eats away at the soul. To turn away from another’s death is to allow one’s own existence to crumble. The noble soul itself is darkened.

The Free Soul and the Ethics of Existence

Soyo Existential Ethics asks,

Why do we turn away from death?

Why do we remain silent before human suffering? It is because we have forgotten our original freedom.

Humanity is, by nature, a free soul. Yet true freedom is not possession. It is found in giving, letting go, sending away, and laying down.

In letting go, we release others to live freely.

In sending away, we choose love instead of possession.

In laying down, we entrust to God what cannot be borne.

Here, humanity becomes truly free. And in this freedom, the ethics of existence is revealed. Ethics is not law nor regulation, but the testimony of love that bears witness to freedom.

Death’s Question and the Responsibility of the Living

Death always asks a question:

“Do I honor human existence?”

“What testimony do I bear before the suffering of those who are gone?”

If we consume death only as an event, we betray the essence of human existence. Yet if we

receive death as a question of the soul, human dignity is restored.

The responsibility of the living is not only to remember, but also to bear the suffering of others and to witness again the dignity of existence. True human freedom is fulfilled in this testimony.

The Freedom of Existence and the Ethics of Love

Human beings complete their personhood in letting go, sending away, and laying down. Yet humanity resists these, and many cannot bear the weight of life and depart. This reality reveals both the nobility and the fragility of existence.

Therefore, we must not consume death.

Death asks us questions.

Death demands responsibility.

Death calls us to recover the ethics of existence.

Soyo Existential Ethics declares:

Human existence is, in essence, a free soul.

That freedom is not in possession, but in letting go, sending away, and laying down.

And only within that freedom does the ethics of existence truly live.

“Soyo Existential Ethics proclaims that philosophy must never remain a mere academic pursuit. True philosophy is not an abstraction but a testimony that saves human existence, restores its dignity, and bears witness to the eternal worth of life.”

逍遙 (Soyo) – Witness to existence and the philosophy of truth.

This essay was first published on the official website of Soyo Existential Ethics

soyophilosophy.kr / soyophilosophy.com.

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Keywords

Soyo Existential Ethics, Philosophy, Death, Freedom, Human Existence, Ethics