6 posts tagged “letting go”

You ever been there?  Ever done something that seemed hilarious at the time but, given the ability to use the keen powers of hindsight, you realize that you just really looked like a huge ass? Yep.  That's where I'm sitting right at this very minute.  I'm always surprised at how novel or surprisingly new and uncomfortable this feeling is considering the fact that I'm comfortable knowing that I've become something of a clown in my almost middle age (and by almost I mean, my thinking  I'm middle-aged when in reality that's still a ways off...unless I'm destined to live only until I'm 66.  In that case, I'm right on target).  On a regular basis, I do things that cause my friends to turn to me and say, "Oh my god...aren't you so embarrassed?" I'm usually able to respond, "Um...no." There's a kind of freedom in embracing life in a bold, unconventional way.  I've grown completely used to laughing too loud or saying something completely true but with no tact whatsoever or exploring what can be a very zany, wildly creative side of myself.  All of this is done with a measure of my own moderation.  I decide who, I decide when, I decide...WHO! (That's a movie quote, by the way...if you can guess who said it I'll give ya...well, a well-deserved, validated feeling of accomplishing absolutely nothing...)  I think I feel dumb because I failed to moderate myself and know it.  So now I've left myself out there, hanging by a thinly veiled shroud of "Oh my god...I am so embarrassed."  These are the times when I wish that time itself was not forever etched in stone.  The past is done.  I'd like it not to be today, thanks very much.

Am I going to confess to you this most egregious social error?  Um...no.  The truth of the matter is that it doesn't matter.  I can almost guarantee that what you're thinking might have caused this feeling probably goes well above and beyond the actual event...probably.  What you're speculating happened most likely is not even remotely close...most likely. Truth be told, the details of the situation are immaterial at this point.  All you need to know is that I feel dumb.  And I think the only remedy is to try to forget it happened.

But since I can remember with pinpoint clarity the exact outfit I wore on my first day of school (that's right...kindergarten...) down to the socks I sported and how they felt on me (they were horizontal striped knee socks...the elastic band at the top was too tight...), I've got a long road ahead.

Ah well.  Se la vie. 

Man, today is going to be one of those days.  You know the kind.  I woke up and knew I didn't want to get out of bed. And I'm fairly sure nothing is going to make it right today.  I'm just not going to let it.  And that's okay, I think.  If in all things there is balance, I'm due for a couple melancholy days after the past six days that were just filled to the brim with joy and fulfillment.  Melancholy isn't ever bad for me and I never really see it as the effect of suffering or want.  It's just a sadness or, even better, a grayness.  Everything looks gray.  I feel gray.  The world smells gray today.  And that's cool.

But, the thing about melancholy lately is that I've been pairing it with "letting go."  I used to have sad days and assume the sadness was coming from something; that it was caused by an event or conditions that created it.  Letting go allows me to disassociate sadness with events; it becomes just an ambient feeling.  And I rejoice in it, actually.  In a world that wants nothing but pre-packaged, shiny happiness all the time, moodiness presents itself as a familiar, comfortable friend.  I don't have to try nearly so hard. And it's not a bad friend.  There's coziness in it somehow.  And I don't have to worry about fixing it.  I can just be with Sadness and welcome it like any conversation I have with a friend.  Sadness and I drink tea together and lay under the red down blanket and talk about how things could be different but not wish them to be that.

And one of the greatest effects of Sadness is that it always brings with it the realization of Love, I think because the two are often juxtaposed.  Love is an easy sell when things are happy; we allow the two to go hand in hand.  But the Love expressed when Sadness is at the table is much more recognizable.  It works harder and stands out on its own merits.  It's uncovered as the hidden "good" in Sadness which we always try to run from.

Today I'm hanging with Sadness but I don't mind it.  Having said that I look forward to Happy's (more specifically Guffawing Laughing's) return.

Well, I'm officially depressed.  It won't last long but this happens after any major holiday into which I've flung myself head-first.  The days afterward are just completely uninteresting in comparison.  Mundane, actually.  Days after holidays are mundane and gray and boring.  This, of course, always passes as I sink back into the usual cycle of the week and the predictability of the movements of everyone around me.  I return to counting the week in books read, tv consumed in some particularity to the day, and hours until I get to sing again.  Somehow that schedule works when I'm in marathon mode but the holidays are sprint mode...and once or twice a year every marathoner likes nothing else that to just run freely and unbound as fast as one can.  But there are always consequences.

This is not an original reflection nor is it even interesting.  I think this happens to everybody.  It's the inevitable flip side to anticipation.  This is the reason that I think having a wedding would destroy me: you wait and plan and wait and plan so long that when it's done, there's a little sense of your evolved "wait and plan" self that actually dies with it.  At least I know Easter will come back next year.  And, hey, before that Christmas will come...but not before Thanksgiving!  (You've just witnessed the rebirth of the "Wait and Plan" cycle...)  But in the same breath that I want these things to come quickly so that I can experience the joy and particular sense of "special" that any event brings, I can't hope for them to get here fast.  My life has to have time to evolve to that point.  And so, I wait.

That for me is the challenge of living in the present and not focusing on the future too much.  In waiting for the next "event" I will lose everything that's specifically NOT mundane about this day...or this moment.  And there are things that I can celebrate right now, even though I'll have to pack away the adrenaline rush of the "Hallelujah Chorus" until next year. Perhaps my challenge, as I'm understanding it now, becomes to accept the days and moments for what they are.  Every day cannot be a super-infused excitement fest; but every day does have something in it that can be celebrated for its own sense.  Maybe even its usual-ness.  Something tells me that celebration is much lower key in comparison.

Happy Tuesday.

This is a first.  In some ways, it's very exciting. In others, I feel a little defeated.  But I think not for long.

Usually when I write about finding Zen I do so in a reflective state; I've had hours to think about something and Zen helps clear me.  But I am having a moment in which I need Zen right now.  I'm not sure why but I just hit this moment that made me enter the early stages of panic.  Honestly, I'm beginning to think this is a Sunday night thing.  I get all caught up in that and the scope of the week which leads me to the scope of the year which leads me to the scope of my life and the scope of the universe.  I was just thinking that I wonder how far down in my lineage (should I end up having kids) that my (not existing right now) prodigies will encounter the end of the world.  I'm not kidding.  This was my thought.

So I did 20 minutes of yoga and I feel better...at least I'm headed back onto the right track.  But what's so amazing about this moment is how fast my brain gets away from me.  It's also being evil in an inter-personal way.  I've been nothing but surrounded by people for the past 5 days including today.  Today I even was surrounded by people all doing things we absolutely love.  It was a great day.  All of a sudden, my brain starts suggesting that I might feel lonely.  That my friends don't really like me.  That people are making excuses to not spend time with me.  WHAT?!? Where is that even COMING from?!? That couldn't be even farther from what has transpired over the past couple days. Shut up, brain.

I think that has been my new insight into Yoga that I've never had before but that has really taken hold this time around.  This is not a linear activity.  You don't reach a certain stage and then "graduate" to the next level.  It's catching yourself at every moment that this starts happening and going back to "letting go."  If I can manage to take things one step at a time and concern myself with only one step at a time then my whole world becomes much more manageable. Expectations, good or bad, cease to exist. That becomes a much more relaxed and able way of being.  That I can handle.

Courtesy of my moment of Zen. 

So here's the thing I'm learning about resignation.  It's not a permanent state.  Don't get me wrong.  It's a fruitful state.  As I suspected, when I really practiced the art of resignation and just allowed things to be as they are and happen at their will and not against mine, the universe did respond immediately.  And in some ways majorly.  But what I temporarily forgot about, maybe even lost sight of, is that resignation cannot be just one act.  It has to be a series of acts of resigning oneself.  A continuous letting go.  How do I know this?  Because at this very moment, not even two weeks away from the first resignation, I'm fighting again.  And losing. Again.

Why did I not see this coming?  It's like having a conversation.  A good one requires two actors and a give and take.  Each response should be, in theory, exactly that.  A re-action to the action itself.  What the past two weeks has been for me is only one exchange.  I navigated that one smoothly; wonderful things happened.  But the universe is not static and it re-acted to my resignation. And lo and behold...here I am fighting again. So now I have to let go...AGAIN.  I'm sorry but does the universe NOT GET how HARD THAT IS!  It took nearly everything I had in me to muster up the gumption the first time.  "Letting go" sounds like it would be an easy, comfortable action.  It is not.  It exhausts me. Why?  Because I fight it, of course.

Okay, the last paragraph is not completely true.  I suppose I do have to come clean if I'm really going to sit here and grumble about the nasty, reactive universe.  Truth be told, I started it.  I picked a fight with the universe today...I did it knowingly and a little impulsively--because I thought I actually could control everything--and I'm learning at this moment that my assumption was very seriously not right.  I think I would've preferred the universe's handling of the situation now that I think about it.  And that makes me feel even worse about it.  I could've prevented this need to fight if I had just kept letting go.  Did I?  No. And now I'm back at square one.

Ultimately, I'm learning great lessons about trust and control in this whole "letting go" conversation I'm having with said universe.  The reason I fight it so hard is that I'm scared of what might be in store for me if I just let go.  Every time I commit to letting go, I feel this little (and by little I mean ENORMOUS) lightning bolt of pure fear just peal through me.  "What if the universe is wrong?"  "What if things get worse?" Another confession: If I examine all of the ways the universe responded in kind to my letting go, major questions and concerns that I've been agonizing over, some for years, were addressed...some even answered.  In many ways, the universe confirmed what I already think to be true.  What it did uniquely contribute was a validation of what I see going on.  And in my bestest, ego-free moments, it gave me new and wicked (ly awesome) insights.

So there it is.  Again.  I stand newly resigned. And it's not killing me.  Well, maybe it's still killing me softly.  Just a little bit.  But I'm letting that go too. 

It's just been that kind of day. 

This will surely sound crazy.  But today was that day that I just stopped fighting.  I realized this morning as I was dragging my sorry self out of bed to go to work, dragging because it was only at 3am that I put myself into bed after having worked on school work for three hours in the newly minted Tuesday.  And it didn't kill me.  And today was the day that I realized that my friends will be who they are, where they are, and I can't change them.  I can only hope they will continue to choose me.  And I stopped fighting over all of the worries and anxieties.  And that didn't kill me either.  Today was the day that I wore a really ugly outfit to work.  And my hair didn't look good.  And there were uncharacteristic bags under my eyes--all probably due to the 3am bedtime.  And I still managed to survive it.  I willing went to the library.  And lived.  I felt alone.  But did nothing about it.  I wanted things to be different.  But couldn't wish them to be anything other than they were. That's right.  Today was the day I decided to resign.

And that made me sad. 

I think it's because I'm a fighter by nature.  I hail from a long line of obstinate mules.  When I get my teeth sunk into something, just let go.  You won't win.  I will not let go until I have completely bedraggled the life out of whatever it is I've decided on.  And I've been deciding for a long time that I was going to resist; I get resistance.  It's comfortable to me. Discontent has become my home.  And today, I resigned myself to just stop resisting.  Just do the work.  Just let them be.  Just let it go.  And be where you are.  And stop fighting it all so hard.  Because the will to resist is fading.  And where you are just might not be that bad.

Ultimately the loss of resistance will result in wonderful things.  I know it will.  Because when you learn to stop running from fear and live not with it but within it...I think that's peace.  It's not that you don't know fear; it's that you can stop resisting it because you don't fear it.  Fear's only power is fear. And I definitely want peace.  And so I gave up the fight.  And it feels like failure.  And like I've lost a friend.  Because it's been with me so long.  But I let it go.

And it didn't kill me.