Friday, October 10, 2003
The Art of Letting Go
Regular readers of this blog (yeah, both of ya) probably know by now that I am not good at bucking trends. If everybody is doing it, I’m likely to scam my way on the bandwagon - probably, just before we overload the tires and bust an axel and the whole thing comes crashing down in a hail of chickenfeathers and sawdust and sproingy noises… when I jump on board, that is a signal relating to to any popular activity akin to the relationship of a death knell to ordinary knells (baby birthing or otherwise).
BUT. I’m seeing people (whom I love and respect or both, but don’t have time to link to, I wrote this last week but am very pressed for time today) writing about The Art of Doing Various Things. I’m artistically challenged (I can actually cut myself on a crayon) so I don’t get a chance to get artsy too often, but reading and recalling the various posts, together with my current contemplative frame of mind and spiritual orientation, leads me to apply myself to a subject of, perhaps, only personal interest:
THE ART OF LETTING GO
In this modern world in which we subsist, seeking meaningful lives and connection to each other, we - by which I mean, I - fight at cross-purposes on a daily basis. I want to be a free spirit, able to respond at a moment’s notice to the opportunities that present themselves to me; to be released from my terrestrial bounds so that I can charge off into the unknown with barely an afterthought and no forethought whatsoever. But I can’t do that, of course. Because I have all this damn stuff to deal with.
I have mountains of material possessions, reams of paperwork, walls covered with photos and paintings, closets full of clothes and shoes and dustbunnies that wear steeltoed construction boots; a calendar full of forgotten birthdays and incipient obligations; a messenger bag loaded with notes and pens and mysterious scrumbles of biomass; a heart and mind that are catching themselves incessantly on the myriad snags of reality - which are, usually, snags of my own making, snags of my own thought and memory, keeping me from moving forward, unravelling the fabric of my future each time it hangs up on my past.
So now I’m in a phase of regeneration and rebirth, right? I’m supposed to find a new path, or reclaim my old one. But my way is strewn with dross and jetsam. The problem for me is, I can’t let any of it go. I’m dragging my random collections of knicknacks and bad memories and stale lives long since lived behind me, tripping over the rocks and ruts and roots of my own history even as I lift my eyes to a clear road and a fresh future ahead of me. So I need to let go. And instead of learning how on my own, assiduously gleaning the way and applying it to my life with quiet monkish dedication, I will engage in the inexcusable conceit of offering advice on the subject. Because those who can’t do, teach. Badly, perhaps, but that never stopped me before.
There are a lot of things of which each of us need to let go, material and emotional. I have broken these down into four categories, and each of these demands a different approach because each represents things to which we cleave for different reasons, and until you know why you are holding onto something you won’t want to let go of it. By the same token, once you know why you are holding on, it can start to feel silly to keep doing so. Speaking for myself, letting go only happens when holding on turns out to be more effort than it’s worth, and for me to make that assessment, I have to know what, in fact, I’m holding, why I started holding it in the first place, and what it’s worth to me to keep holding onto it.
* What we didn’t know we were holding
These ones are easy. There is a place in most any living space - often, more than one such space - where things hide. Maybe it’s a suitcase full of paperwork or a closet in the spare room that shelters mysterious artifacts or a desk drawer where you dump everything that you don’t want to think about. In my house I have a junk drawer, a spare closet, a nighttable drawer, and a few boxes of “memorabilia.” And this is after years of studiously jettisoning extra stuff. Each time I go into any of these places, I find something I’d totally forgotten about. These things can take any form - toys, notes, correspondence, posters… I can identify these items by the mental response I get in unearthing them: “Oh man, do I still have this?” That response tells me that I didn’t remember that I even owned this item anymore. And that probably means I don’t need it anymore. If I needed it, I’d have known I had it, right? (That one’s rhetorical. The answer is “yes.") But instead, sometime not long after the dawn of time, I put it away for undisclosed reasons (probably because I couldn’t be bothered to throw it away at that moment) and never thought of it again. On rediscovering such an item, I need to undertake a short mental exercise: “When am I actually going to need this again? Is anyone going to ask me about it? Does it have any intrinsic aesthetic value?” If these questions garner a negative response - if I didn’t know I had it, and can’t imagine why I’ll need it again, and it’s not particularly nice to look at or stroke with my fingertips or otherwise - I can get rid of it. No more thinking is needed. Just drag around a garbage bag and fill it up with these items whenever they surface. Bag that old stuff. One category down, three to go.
* What we don’t feel allowed to get rid of
These things don’t necessarily live in the “hidey holes” around the apartment or manse - they’re often carefully stored in special places, though sometimes they’ve been there so long you forgot you put them there. Books from relatives, presents given on long-past special occasaions, official paperwork from parts of your life that are far far behind you… I have calendars going back to the mid-90s, for example, and a lovely piece of not-very-meaningful calligraphy I got for my wedding 14 years ago that has no frame anymore, and a collection of puns my grandfather wanted to publish. Why don’t I feel allowed to get rid of these things? Different reasons. Sometimes I originally kept them for official CYA purposes, but as of today my ass has progressed sufficiently out of the past and into the present that usually I no longer need that particular coverage. Dump the junk - like the student loan files from the 80s and 90s, the ancient cancelled checks, the registration and insurance for cars I no longer own.... Then there are items that it seems it would be disrespectful to dump. I have to ask myself if the person who gave me these items still cares about them, and if not, whether I care anymore myself. I have to give myself permission not to keep things I actually don’t want, regardless of who gave them to me. If the purpose of a gift was to commemorate a moment which has drowned in the tides of time, and the giver won’t even know I’m ridding myself of it - bag it. Except: sometimes these things represent the epitome or culmination of a person about whom I truly care. The calligraphy was just a nice gift, not the crystalization of a precious personality. The stupid puns are what my grandfather was all about, and we discussed them repeatedly and at length to the end of his days. I don’t care if they suck. I am keeping them. They meant too much to him, for them to mean nothing to me. I’m still not allowed to get rid of such as these. But the rest goes in the bag.
* What we hold for malicious purposes
These are items that were preserved for one purpose, and one purpose only: to get back at someone else. Bad photos of ex-friends, notes left at my desk or front door in a bad temper, little essays or letters about peeves and irritations that would long since have been forgotten but for my having memorialized them.... And here, we find outselves needing to do an internal inventory too. Because most of this stuff isn’t actually stuff - it’s memory, recollection, carefully pickled grudge. And if you thought the junk drawer was a mess, try looking in that space under your frontal cortex. The clutter is breathtaking. So in these cases, it’s better just to deal with items that come up one at a time, as the opportunity presents itself, rather than to attempt a wholesale housecleaning. You’ll just wind up with old grudge stuck under your fingernails and a splitting headache and a big mess instead of a neatly compressed mess. And what is this stuff, anyway? Why is it still around? At the time, it seemed critical to me that some given incident or issue or discrepancy or problem be preserved, because I would then be able, at some point in the future (which is now) to go back and say, “Yes, but back in 1997 you were mean to me” or “Sure, but look at this terrible photo of you” or “let’s just tell our studio audience how you ate my sandwich back in the early 80’s.” Well that doesn’t sound too productive in the light of this new day. Anyone I wanted to get back at, I either did it already, made up with, or disentangled myself from. These are like loose psychic fishing hooks in the lingere drawer of my psyche, intended to be tools but really just agents of random chaos and destruction. If I could get back the energy I put into hoarding these sour memories in anticipation of their triumphant use, I would earn back a year or two of life. Well, there’s no time like the present to cut my losses. My bag is getting full, but there is plenty of room for these valueless lumps of dross. Letters to student advisors, complaints to my boss, sniping back-and-forths with the auto repair shop, and numberless whining gripes - all these go into the bag. Whew. I’m feeling 10 pounds lighter already.
* Reminders of lives lived and days past
This is, for me, the hardest category about which to be objective. I do like to keep little reminders of the good times I’ve enjoyed and the hard times I’ve overcome. But how many do I need? And why? I try to limit myself to items that actually hold a lesson for me, or items with aesthetic value, or single commemoratives of transfiguring events. There were a lot of old photos of me at various summercamps, posing with my cabinmates. I don’t know these people anymore, they’re bad photos of me and meaningless otherwise. There are my bluebooks from college - I’ll keep a few from really good classes, one with a really good grade and complimentary comments, and the calculus final which is in my handwriting, seems to be my own work, but which is total incomprehensible gibberish to me, proving that I am capable of achieving the impossible. Law school graduation photo? Keep it. Law school graduation program? I’ve got that covered with the photo; dump it. Notes passed to me in high school from the startlingly beautiful girl? I’ll keep one or two to remind myself that I merited attention from someone so much in demand at one point in my life. The rest say nothing further - they’re dumpable. Favorite old t-shirts I can’t wear anymore? Tickets to concerts I attended years ago? CDs I used to love and now never listen to even when I’m bored? If I’m not using it, and it doesn’t teach me anything about myself, and isn’t nice enough to show to guests or even to impose on my own sorry self, it’s time to let it go.
In theory, once the dead wood has been discarded, it’s easier to get more things done - even easier to see what needs to get done in the first place. Maybe I’ll be more productive. Maybe I’ll just enjoy the empty echoing sound that rings out as I pace around my apartment or that bounces inside my skull now that there’s so much less surplussage to baffle the sound. Where does that leave me? Not anywhere in particular - but the view is a lot clearer and my clothes fit better. Have I gotten rid of anything? I think so. Did it make a difference? Time will tell. I sure threw away a lot of crap, but maybe that was just the first layer. But this is for sure: I have more storage space. And you know what that means: nature abhors a vacuum....
