How About You?
Did anybody in your life ever teach you to let go?
Okay, forget teach.
Did anybody even suggest that letting go might be a possibility?
Like, an option?
In my family, we had no deep and meaningful discussions about surrendering. To the contrary, my parents’ lives were living energetic examples of:
- Holding on.
- Keeping going.
- Not stopping.
- Getting ahead of It.
Whatever the It-of-the-moment might be.
My parents, Tillie and Sidney, were good, good people. They were worker-bees of the Nth degree. It was all about work. Our lives were rooted in my dad’s neighborhood grocery store, The Colfax Market. He grew up in the store, too—it was his father’s before him. They worked, my parents, side by side, Dad six-and-a-half days a week, Mom, six days a week.
My sister and I were practically raised in the store, which was two blocks from our house on Arthur Avenue and one block from our elementary school, John James Aubudon #42.
It was about pushing through, working hard, coming home, doing it again. Not a lot of conversation about letting go, stopping, relaxing, renewing.
Nothing in my Jewish education, as sketchy as it was (I spent one traumatic day in Hebrew school, terrified because of my stuttering, and many long, endless hours in remarkably boring Sunday School classes), nobody said:
You can let go.
Things come and they go.
People come and they go, too.
There is something else to help you.
There is a Profound Power in the universe protecting you.
You can relax now.
Who knew?
Nobody said any of that.
How about you?
~~~
This blog is prompted by this most intense and challenging week of a more literal letting go. We have lived in our little house for almost thirty years. Our basement, which immediately upon moving in became the initial dumping ground of Stuff that didn’t fit anywhere else or Stuff that wasn’t relevant in the moment; strangely enough, Stuff began to multiply itself. Stuff begat Stuff, which gave birth to more Stuff. Boxes seemed to invite other boxes to join them.
The piles were many-layered, top layers hiding their surrounding neighbors really well. I did a few (okay, maybe one, my spouse says), clean-up, got support, carted away the extraneous. The non-relevant.
Nevertheless, the Community of Stuff continued to fester. And I swear, the basement multiplied and grew by itself.
Due to flooding in said basement, the discovery of a crack in the foundation, we had to employ a company to deal with those issues. Along with fixing the crack, de-molding, etc., came this invitation:
THEY WOULD REMOVE ANYTHING WE NO LONGER NEEDED.
They would carry anything up the killer four steps and banish all from our existence.
It seemed impossible to pull this off. Yet, we did it. We spent some hours with a friend, letting go of:
- 1,763 (or so it seemed) old Kripalu catalogues of great historical value
- teaching manuals from every program ever taught at Kripalu (or so it seemed)
- painfully moldy books
- my wetsuit that wouldn’t fit on my one foot today
- the badminton net we never put up
- the now moldy, once blessed L.L. Bean tent
- and on and on and on
Kudos to my spouse, who was, with great cajoling, able to release some of her massive pile of flower pots of every f___ing size and shape.
We did it. It is done.
The basement guys, Brady and Carlos, so young and intentional, so committed, finish in two more days. I cannot even imagine the end result, the New Basement with Limited Piles, might literally knock me out. This week has almost knocked me out already.
It is a miracle of letting go.
Forced letting go.
~~~
If it be old beliefs,
An old pattern that squeezes us,
A person, a place,
Yes, even a thing,
Or a great many
Piles of Things,
Letting go,
Giving it back,
Changing course,
I AM SURE
Renews,
Invigorates,
Opens to the new moment.
How about you?
What do you think about this?
~~~
As a huge Simon and Garfunkel fan (no surprises there), I had a tiny traumatic transition to Paul Simon’s solo work. This song won me over, forever and always. With Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the South African male choral group singing in traditional styles, this song, almost 40 years old now, continues to uplift me.
Here are Paul and Ladysmith Black Mambazo:
~~~
Honoring the journey of remembering…..
Acknowledging the inevitability of forgetting.
Celebrating our forays into letting go of internal and external Stuff,
Bowing to the eventuality of holding on.
No bad parts—
All good—
As we
Find our
Way
Home.
May all beings benefit from our time together.
Blessings,
Aruni