Between Delight and Abandonment

Yesterday was a walk in the park. I don’t mean the day was easy. I just went for a walk in the park.

It was a day for letting go, of routines, of other’s and my expectations, and of heavy clothing. It was a glorious day. It may have been our first day of summer, as spring is a season Calgarians only read about.

I set off to explore, curious. No sir-ee. No demure little cabbage am I.

As I walked, I pondered – about letting go. There were children releasing kites to the wind, the last of the withered leaves were dropping off the trees in preparation for new growth, and the quintessential tiny green shoots were striving to press up through the still-cool ground.

Spring is a reminder, heralding renewal and rebirth, letting go of the old and embracing the new.

The most important reason for going from one place to the other is to see what’s in between. – Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth

Italso Calvino said, “Every experience is unrepeatable.” In a wink, it’s gone. The bloom on the flower, clouds floating away, a person leaving. The only freedom we have with change lies with acceptance, in the act of willful surrender. You have to know when to fold ’em, grieve, and then let it go.

Some things are meant to be laid down, their time has come. One determinant for the freshness of life comes from one’s willingness to leave the comfort of certainty and step into a place where one lives not knowing what the next day will bring.

Discomfort isn’t bad – it’s just uncomfortable. Every change is a loss, and every loss is a transformation and it must be mourned before it can be transformed into something valuable

What matters most is that we make up our mind and march forward. Nothing is worse than the paralysis of indecision, for what good will it do to do nothing?

Practitioners of procrastination and denial climb the stairs to nowhere fast. Like if you don’t talk about death, it won’t happen. If we keep moving ahead, we find ourselves in a different place. I wish I wasn’t so indecisive, but now I’m not so sure.

We don’t have to be brimming with hope and exuberance, or even passion. Just curiosity. The main thing is that we show up, that we are fully present, and that we find a way to be part of this glorious world of ours.

I think a lot of us wish that if we bought every self-help book on Amazon and put them under our pillow for twelve nights in a row, we would be fixed. But then again, most self-help books would be vastly improved by reading them aloud while paired with interpretive dance.

Our life is better when we feel we are of use to someone or something. It can be as simple as being a good friend to one person. Our home is better when we ask ourselves not what we can buy, but what we can get rid of. The problem in our culture isn’t having enough, it’s having too much. We need to decide what should stay and what should go.

Yes, and this would require several different life skills that aren’t necessarily our favourites.

Letting go of old habits, ideas, or people who are not serving your best interests, mismatched socks, rusty garden chairs, and more, is not an easy task.

Letting go can be scary. Sometimes you have to let one story end so the next one can begin, yet one can never know when the next story will happen, which is why you always have to let it go and carry on with Scheherazade survival.

Letting go can be as simple as recycling, clearing out the basement or giving away old clothing. It can be as radical as leaving a long-standing marriage or friendship or moving to a new city. Whichever it is, it is probably going to create anxiety, and maybe even great pain. But more than likely, at the end of the day, you will have achieved renewal, serenity and more space in your cupboards.

Trust me, you won’t fix it. I have a hard and fast rule. If it’s broken, fix it (this weekend) or forget it. And those red kitten heels with the broken sole? What it will cost you to get them fixed is probably not worth your time, effort or money.

Do look a gift horse in the mouth. People’s decorating tastes change over time, but I am fairly certain you will never enjoy a series of rhinestone-accented paintings of clowns or a collection of tiny gold rimmed plates of Oriental scenes. Many hoard those unattractive presents because they think it is the decent thing to do. But a gift is to be given away freely. What you do with it is your choice.

Just admit that you don’t like it. As you sort through your stuff, become aware of the fact that maybe you don’t even want or even like some of it. Most people live with them out of pure apathy. This is the easiest clutter to set free. All it takes is a little motivation to pack up a few boxes and drop them off at a local charity. Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s.

Know what you really need. Often what we need is only related to the thing we have. For instance, many of us have thousands of documents in bulky filing cabinets. But you only need the information on the pages, not the paper itself. Just keep the documents you really need to have in their original form, then scan and save others as digital files. Toss the rest.

Almost everything now is available digitally, saving thousands of trees. They also can be more readily accessed, instead of spending tens of hours searching for that one lone document in the myriad of boxes.

Photos and children’s memorabilia can be scanned and made digitally available in this way also. Save them on a USB Flash Drive and put them in your safety deposit box or fire proof safe. I also send copies to my children, I-Cloud or similar locations, so there will always be a copy of anything valuable to me somewhere in case of fire, flood or computer failure.

Let go of the guilt. I hear story after story where their parents or grandparents passed away, whereby they inherited a collection of 27 rusty knives, warped cookie sheets, mismatched glasses, and rickety furniture. They kept all these items for decades, moving them from one house to another, stumbling over them in the basement, threading through them in drawers, and hitting their knees against pieces in the their now over-crowded rooms.

They finally came to realize that if their parents or grandparents were still alive, they may have replaced the cookie sheets and knife set (and been mortified that they had passed on such dangerous accoutrements), most of the glasses would have been broken (if they had ever been used), and furniture long disposed of for more appropriate pieces.

“One day” almost never comes. This may be surprisingly unsurprising, but many justify keeping half their wardrobe on the basis that ” one day” they will wear the item. They would lose the weight. The piece would come back in style. But let’s face it, not only does the style change, but so do you.

P.S. It is a well known fact that the day you balance your checking account, master a salsa step, clean your desk, and purge your closet, you reduce the likelihood of getting some dreadful disease.

Yes, and sometimes I can put cornflakes to sleep.