On letting go...
Time to let go.
Of old books, boxes and CDs. Give them away, let someone unleash the joy it once gave you. The joy is not realized when sitting in a corner, collecting dust. Letting go allows the cycle of joy to continue.
Time to let go.
Of the worst thoughts and ideas we have about ourselves. No one hurts us like we hurt ourselves.
Time to let go.
Of the “friendship” that is more of an idea than a reality. We don’t make friends, and we don’t keep friends. We don’t lose friends either. People come in an out of our lives, for some period of time. And we share part of a journey together. Most people don’t realize their friendship had undergone a “breakup'“, without the fighting or declaration of something coming to an end. Most friendships transition to a memory of that friendship. Holding on to people, to friends, when it has come time to say goodbye, is dishonorable. We need to let people move freely, to grow, to learn, to crash, to heal. We need this for ourselves. And this requires us to experience the loss of a friendship. And to morn, and heal, and go through introspection in isolation. Only to emerge as fertile grounds for new friendships and the experiences they will bring to us.
Time to let go of the warm summer air.
And all the joys of summer, the travel and sleeping in. The roadtrips and hotels. The flip-flops and shorts. And to make space for the crips autumn air, the turning leaves, the crunching fields, the shorter days. We prepare for Autumn, and sitting in the west.
Time to let go of old habits.
Like Instagram and Facebook and all the other things that consume us, and distract us, and turn us into mindless pseudo-humans. We reclaim our consciousness, and move through life with intention, and openness. We pull ourselves out of anxiety, created by capital forces, and shame, that we are told will only be solved by losing 20 pounds or being younger.
Time to let go of our obsession with youth.
And to really marvel in the wonders of age, how our bodies adapt and change, and how wisdom and grace comes from sitting with our elders, not ChatGPT. We are taught to discard and “kick out” our kids as soon as they are 18, and put our parents into nursing homes as soon as they can’t be of financial or emotional support to us. This is not love. This is a byproduct of American “rugged individualism” that has been spoon-fed to us since our days in kindergarten. And the result is loneliness, for all generations. Our elders have stories to share, and the patience to share them with our children. By bringing them closer to us, we show our kids what love is, and how we want to be loved when we are older. No one should be shipped off to a “home.” How did we normalize this? [Note: Full transparency, this is something I have only recently come to embrace, and I in fact did place my father in an independent senior living complex for two years, prior to moving to a home that could house us all.]
Time to let go of old ideas. Of certainty. Of identity.
Our society values conviction, and this in turn hardens our belief system, and makes us less curious. I wrote about this here. What if we said “I don’t know”, or “I’m not sure.” or even “I was wrong about this.” We come out into the world and take on whatever information is thrust our way, and then seek out others with similar ideas so we can join their tribe. Then we find out that we are actually really “special” and need to further atomize and deconstruct, and find a tiny fraction of the internet that speaks to our “1 of 1” characteristics. We think this is our identity, and we tell the world who we are, and what to call us, and then shame anyone who doesn’t understand us the way we want to be understood. We shame them when they mistakenly use the wrong pronouns, or call us Arabs when in fact we are Iranians. Or say they are Mexican when in fact they are Honduran. Our “ideas” have stopped serving us, or anyone else. And instead made us look for differences and divisions, not our similarities. Our ideas have made us unapproachable, and hardened. Our ideas have turned us against one another.
Ask yourself this: What do I actually know? The answer is nothing. You know nothing. You are traveling through space and time and there will be no memory of you or your existence within two generations. That I can tell you with certainty. The only thing you know is right this moment. Even your memories of yesterday are not accurate.
This is consciousness. We find consciousness when we let go. Letting go of a tomorrow that hasn’t happened, of last year and all stories we culled from it, of the people and things that no longer serve us (or them).
My mother was a hoarder. She chain-smoked and drank cheap wine. It would be easy to ignore her, but she had wisdom.
She would say to me: Every once in while, have a mental garage sale.
This was 30 years ago. And only now am I ready to take in her lesson. I had to let go of my own ideas, to make space for hers.
