Letting Go

I was so thirsty when I pulled into the drive through at Zaxyby's for my usual large unsweet tea with one packet of sweet-n-low the other day.  I couldn't wait for that first sip as I sat in line behind a little blue Honda, wondering what the heck they ordered that could take so long to prepare.  I knew that as soon as that drink was in my hand, I was going to stab the straw in the top and take a big long gulp.  I wasn't even going to wait until I had stirred in the questionable chemical substitute for sugar.  I was just that thirsty.

Miles later as I drove down the road with my tea in my hand, I realized my fingers were freezing. "Why haven't I put this down?" I asked myself.  Then I looked down at the drink holders between the two front seats and realized there was no place for the drink that was in my hand because there was an empty cup and a half-finished can of Coke in the cup holders.  I took the empty cup and tossed it in the floor to make room for my fresh cup of ice-cold tea.  Once in a while I would reach down and pick up my refreshing drink to take a sip, never once worrying about whether or not it would still be there when my hand groped blindly for it.  I knew every time that it would be right where I left it.

Here I go being all metaphorical again...

That drink taught me a whole new way of looking at this "letting go" concept.  It was that sometimes we hang onto things for far too long because we have other things we haven't completely put in their place yet.

I was finished with that empty cup and that half-gone can of Coke, but I hadn't thrown them away.  They were no good to me anymore, but they were taking up valuable space.  They were in a spot that I needed to be able to use for something else, and because they weren't properly put away, the remains of drinks past were forcing me to hold onto something that was uncomfortable for me.

Life really is a huge lesson in learning to let go of things: People, situations, outcomes, emotions, hurts even love at times.  If you look up "letting go" quotes on Google, you'll get a million of them and they all make perfect sense, but when it comes to actually DOING the letting go, well, that's a lot harder than making up a pithy quote.  The thing is, we do let go of things to a certain extent, but many times we leave them sitting unresolved for far too long.  We create a back-log of hurts and failures and disappointments that leaves us little room to properly handle the new stuff that gets handed to us.

It is hard to let go of something we want.  I suppose that's why we often just set it aside for a while, choosing instead to believe that when we are ready, we can come back for it and it will still be there.  The problem is, once you set something aside for long enough, it becomes useless to you.  Everything life gives us has a place; either we keep it and cherish it, or we learn from it and put it away where it belongs.  In times when we find ourselves with a new handful of worries that we need to set down, that back-log of old stuff tends to get in the way and we are forced to either deal with the old, or hang onto the new, even if it hurts.

I'm kind of in that place now.  I'm finding that I have a pile up of old "stuff" that I haven't properly put away yet.  Those old wounds that have left me with a half-filled cup of self-doubt, fear and pain are keeping me from being able to see things objectively.  They have been forcing me to hang on to something uncomfortable for far too long and I'm finally seeing the need to let those things go for good.  I need to find a way to set this new load down, but I need to keep it within reach, at least for a while.  I'm just not ready to put it away yet, I haven't figured out yet where it needs to go or what I need to learn from it.

What I do know though, is that I have to make room for it.  I have to confront those old left-over things that are preventing me from properly putting my current things in their places.

I suppose before you can let something go, you have to acknowledge that you're still hanging onto it. If things are tucked away out of sight, if we refuse to look at them and recognize them for what they are, we can't very well go through them and rid ourselves of the things that are no longer useful to us. We become emotional hoarders; afraid to let go of useless burdens that serve no other purpose than keeping us buried beneath their pile of clutter.  Our hearts and minds become a jumble of fear and uncertainty because we get so overwhelmed.  We can't sort anything out because we don't know where to begin.

But I think I have found my starting point now.  I know I need to start with all the things I have kept packed away in my heart for too long.  I need to let those things go first, then I'll have the space I need to set things down and look at them from a new perspective.  Only then will I be able to figure out what to do with this new stuff life has given me.