Yet again, this apparent single lesson that I’ve learned is really a collection of related lessons. The first nugget hidden in the title above is that sometimes when we think we have accomplished something, we have just found a sneaky way to avoid it. I keep thinking that I have made real progress on letting go of numerous things to just find that I let go of part of them, often the part of little value or that was never really “in question.” If we can say “yes, but” then we are not letting go. Other times I think I let go of something but secretly attach little addendums, like as long as X, Y, or Z happen. That is not letting go. I think it is time to let go, without qualification to ever having a thick head of hair again or becoming President or living forever or being totally safe. I’ll need to keep letting go of this again and again.
But really that is yet another lesson; this is a process not a destination. Love is active as is presence in a weird way. We don’t ever stand still. We are never there. There is no there. There is only relative motion. I’m moving more or less “towards” letting go. I need to do this every single day. I can’t just do it once and check off a box. Life is change, duh! And all of this for me is happening while all of that is happening for you and the other nearly eight billion humans and the rocks and bowling alleys and stars and dark matter. It’s all moving towards, away, affecting everything else. Maybe the real impediment to my progress is just that Brady won’t simply remain retired?
Another lesson is that by “letting go” of something we are also simultaneously through the law of opportunity cost (that’s right, I just elevated this relationship to a law) allowing for other things to occur and be experienced. And, further, for those things to be allowed to be let go of, or not! If we are holding onto something we are implicitly excluding other things from consideration or experience. You can’t be on offense and defense at the same time.
And don’t forget the false belief that we have control in the first place. I’ll either run out of money or not before I die and there are a billion billion billion things completely beyond my control that can and will affect that. Let go. Do your best-ish (there is no best!), be reasonable, trust yourself and others, be courageous, and just breathe. I am never sure if our false sense of control is born more from hubris, archaic self-preservation, or something entirely different. Maybe it too is somehow Brady’s fault. And even further, sometimes by trying super hard to do something we are actually making it even less likely we will get the desired outcome. Why did we “select” that particular outcome to hold onto anyway?
And really, now, once again, throw away all that I’ve said and just be present.
