LETTING GO…
I’ve had quite a week. After many months of furloughing, wondering, speculating and negotiating my ‘day’ job of 30 years plus officially ended on 31st August through redundancy. I had been disinvesting for a while, probably knowing that spiritually it was time for me to move on. Yet now it’s physically happened I feel a strange mixture of relief, sadness and occasional mild panic…..
To add to a rather poignant week yesterday I had to help my parents re-home a beloved rescue dog who had joined the family all the way from Romania just two short months ago. Whilst doting on my Mum he had grown increasingly aggressive towards my Stepdad who, being quite frail, became fearful of living in his own house. Sadly we had no option, but were fortunate in finding a great new home for him to go to.
So I appear to be currently challenged by the theme of letting go. And there seems to be a lot of that around at the moment for so many. The coronavirus pandemic has stripped away many of the things by which we once defined ourselves. Jobs, security, plans, hopes. The Buddhists describe a liberation from suffering as being able to ‘die a little every day.’ I often wondered what that really meant; it sounds quite a high price to pay to be free of existential angst.
And yet as I face the emotional upheaval of leaving a vulnerable pet in the hands of relative strangers and facing a future with uncertain employment prospects, there is something about that Buddhist precept that strangely brings it to life. Now to mention ‘dying a little everyday’ and bringing something to life in the same sentence may at first seem paradoxical. But I think I”m now beginning to see, and live, the truth of its deeper meaning.
The pain of letting go something familiar, something dear, is tangible. My ego wrestles with it, resists it, panics from it and then dances with the idea of simply surrendering to it. And there’s something incredibly liberating in that surrendering. It seems to somehow dissolve the restricting, limiting fear and opens up a space within. A space which allows trust to enter. To realise that when I don’t let go I stop living with the reality of life. In the fullness of the moment.
The pain embedded in letting go burns away all that my ego wants to define myself by. And, at the same time, releases me from the fear that holds me back from realising who I really am beyond my vulnerable, limited physical self….
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