Life is full of the need for letting go. From the simplicity of exhaling to the final letting go of our lives and embracing death, letting go is part of the rhythm of life, a fact that is inescapable in the fall.
Often, though, the need to let go isn't so obvious. For two years Mike and I felt locked in by the arrangement of furniture in our living room and den. It just didn't seem possible to rearrange things even though the layout was far from ideal. We also couldn't find a good place for the exercise equipment or the piano anywhere in the house, and access to the fireplace was all but blocked with Mike's big corner desk in the den. Our home often felt cramped and inconvenient to me.
Yep! We thought we were stuck with it – until one inspired Saturday when the idea of letting go of that big old desk came up. At first it seemed impossible. The desk drawers were stuffed full and the top covered with equipment and stacks of important stuff. Where would all that go? How would Mike work without it? But the idea had taken hold. If we didn’t have to work around the desk,a lot more than floor space opened up.
Possibilities opened up. New options. One idea led to another and within a few hours we had mapped out plans for shifting things between and within almost every room in the house. We even let go of a couple of other small pieces.The new layout gives us the spaces and places we wanted. The impact has been quite amazing and the process was pretty quick.
Letting go is often like that. Releasing one thing makes way for another, and sometimes the new is even better than we could have imagined. Then why is it such a struggle to let go that we hang on and hang on and stack up stuff - literally or figuratively? How is it that we make a case for keeping the “treasures” that can only be considered junk by somebody else?
We hold on out of habit or guilt or the fear of losing something much more important than the thing itself. Sometimes we even convince ourselves to hang on to stuff that we really don’t want any more, Meanwhile, there is less and less room in our lives.
We’ve been talking about physical stuff, but the same can be said about old habits, once-treasured routines that don’t quite fit for us any more, gatherings that have become pure obligations, ideas that we cling to without examining, relationships that no longer serve us, and more.
Regardless of whether it is material things or intangibles, most of us have some letting go to do this fall. Take some time this fall to pay attention to what you are being invited to release. Listen so you'll recognize that it's time to ease your grip on a role or phase or routine or way of thinking or...
The challenge is always the letting go in our heads and hearts. Physically moving things and making changes is surprisingly simple once the internal release has happened. More than that, though, the practice of letting go helps us to become something new. It prepares us for what's next.
How about you? What do you need to drop this fall? What will grow in its place come spring?