There is much emphasis on “letting go” these days. Maybe I am just hanging out with more
hippies, or maybe it’s the age we are reaching, but it seems my pinterest and
facebook are constantly reminding me that I need to let go of my past to move
forward. I get it. And frankly, I’m pretty good at it. I have sold all most of my possessions TWICE
in my life and moved somewhere new. I
have “let go” over and over of my old ideas of who I would be to be able to become who I am. I let go of expectations, of material things,
of loves, of habits. I am pretty decent
at recognizing when the old stuff isn’t serving me anymore. But today, I found an old t-shirt which has
made it through my two giant stuff purges and multiple moves, and I looked at
it and thought, “I will NEVER get rid of this.”
Whoa. I don’t have a
lot of nevers in my life. I don’t hang on to much materially, but here
I was acknowledging fully that I need that t-shirt forever. Sure, maybe I’ll lose it. Maybe, in time, I will change and be able to get
rid of it. In reality there are a
plethora of reasons I would part with this shirt, but today I truly visualized
my CHILDREN wearing this shirt when it looked all old and vintage. Right now it looks like this:
This is the free college-event shirt that I got when I met
Maggie Feiss. Maggie and I would end up
best friends by the end of that freshman year.
She taught me a million things about how to be awesome. She is literally one of the most amazing
creatures I have ever met, and she died in 2008. My father had past away a few months earlier
that same year. It was a time of
loss. Honestly, such deep loss that I
often feel like nothing else can really be that bad. I did
what I had to do to get through that time; some of it stupid and some of it
good and some of it just normal life.
And I’m good now. I
have happiness. I miss my father and I
miss Maggie. It is still a little bit
beyond my full comprehension that I will never be able to talk to either of
them again, although I know it is true.
But I have done my work and let go. I have let
go of the anger. Let go of the confusion, of the
panic. Let go of looking for answers in all the wrong places. Let go
of fear of feeling. Let go of my ideas of what is fair.
Let go of a lot of the pain
(okay, some still bubbles up from time to time).
So why not this shirt?
Or the bracelet that was Maggie’s that I never EVER take off, or my
father’s 60’s Gibson guitar that is absolutely
the first thing I would save in a fire. Where does this material attachment to memory
fit in? Is it a weakness? Maybe.
A sign that I have much further to go in my zen journey. And if I am so attached to this stuff, it is
fair to say, that I am also very attached to reminders of these people and
these people themselves. What does “let
go” means in regards to a person you have lost?
Should I stop trying to preserve every inch of memory I have of these
people? Terrified that I would forget
them for even a single day. Maggies
bracelet serves as a tattoo. Every time
I look at it I remind myself of her, not to forget her and what she taught
me. In essence, NOT to move on.
It is easy to say let’s all LET GO of the bad stuff. Let go of people who make you feel bad or
feelings that drag you down. Don’t cling
on to stuff you don’t need. But hey, I
NEED my dad. I am CLINGING whole-heartedly
to these people (and others) who have left me.
REFUSING to let go of our time together, and in turn, there are certain
material items that have come to represent their time in my life.
Letting go of a loved one is… not easy? Not possible? Not
the goal? Obviously, we must move on and
move forward with our lives, but this is actually the easy part. Life drags us forward. Even in the worst dark depressions,
eventually you will have bills to pay that drag you from your bed and into the
light of day. But how do you balance the
remembering those who you will never see again with the importance of “letting go?”
Obviously, I don’t know yet.
Namaste.
