Letting go

If you know me even a smidge, you will know that I LOVE reading. I cannot get enough of the process of discovering and learning new things. About anything and everything. Always. And, quite often on these reading expeditions, I “happen upon” the most profound of insights. Not always pleasant, but always meaningful. This week’s rambling is a combination of where those “nuggets” have taken me.

I was reading about the Foo Fighters – Dave Grohl specifically – the other night, and I discovered the most interesting thing. Even when he was “only” the drummer in Nirvana, he was already writing and recording songs. Songs he never even thought to take to Kurt Cobain as possibilities for the band, because Kurt Cobain was…well…Kurt Cobain – the icon for a generation; the best thing since sliced bread…no, maybe even better; a genius; the best voice writing exactly what everyone was thinking. Whether that is true is something that can be debated, but the fact remains that Dave Grohl was overawed enough that he did not pursue something he was passionate about. 

But then Kurt Cobain died tragically, and he was left with a choice: Do I remain a drummer and just join another band (the most logical, certainly expected, choice)? Or do I risk doing my own thing? He decided to take the risk, and the rest is legendary history – even if you’re not a fan of the Foo Fighters. It was so strange – surreal, in fact – to think that all the amazing songs, the anthems for life they have become for more than one generation, might never have come to be had it not been for the tragedy those many years ago. How strange life’s journey can be…how interesting the results of unfortunate events…

And then I saw this on Twitter: “Sometimes you need to say farewell to the company you keep in order to break free from the patterns you're in.” Even when that company might be the most amazing company according to you and to everyone around you, too. Because they might be the reason you are not living up to your full potential – whether they realise it or not. Now, sometimes you are spared the difficulty of having to make the hard choice to let go. It might not feel like it at the time…or ever, for that matter…but sometimes we are “forced” out of these relationships by conflict, rejection or death. It is terrible and often sad, but still you are “opened up” – your potential suddenly becomes something, has to become something more. And then I realised something even more saddening – that we – I – mostly wait until we are forced out of situations/relationships before we take action. Even in those cases where we know the relationship is holding us back.

“The truth is, unless you let go, unless you forgive yourself, unless you forgive the situation, unless you realize that the situation is over, you cannot move forward.” - Steve Maraboli “Some people believe holding on and hanging in there are signs of great strength. However, there are times when it takes much more strength to know when to let go and then do it.” - Ann Landers 

So let's start being thankful for those times that we didn't have to make the choice - even though it may have been painful experiences. And let's start showing true courage. We know the people and the relationships we need to move on from. Let's not wait any longer. That way we can recover and develop our true selves. And who knows what impact that might (will!) have on the world! "All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on." - Havelock Ellis

Be still

One of those days…

Yesterday two of my colleague friends and I were talking about emotion – about what the ultimate emotion is and what it looks and feels like, about how to create emotion etc. One, Juan, asked me to write a blog about emotions to give him my opinion on things. The irony is that, the more I think about it (and boy, have I thought about it!  ), the more I know that emotion is exactly that which cannot be written or talked about. You cannot “create” emotion in yourself or anyone else; you can only experience it.

“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.” – Helen Keller

And so this blog took an unexpected turn – it is not about emotion or the creation of emotion, but rather about being still…about abandoning ourselves to life’s every moment…about allowing ourselves to breathe…For in the living of it, in the letting go of our attempts to analyse it, therein lies the experience of true emotion. It is only then that the voice of our bodies can be heard, even more, that we can resonate with the emotions of those surrounding us. Only in allowing ourselves the simplicity (the freedom?) of completely immersing ourselves in this body, this moment, this heart, can we know what emotion is. Can we become who we need to be and do what we need to do.

“All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Immersing ourselves in the moment, no matter how small it may seem.

We cannot, actually, discuss emotion; in fact, we shouldn’t, for then we are missing the point and the emotion. We can and should only allow ourselves to “be still” – to abandon ourselves to the moment, to absorb the totality of every small experience in every day, to become uninhibited.

“There is a relationship between the eye contacts we make and the perceptions that we create in our heads, a relationship between the sound of another’s voice and the emotions that we feel in our hearts, a relationship between our movements in space all around us and the magnetic pulls we can create between others and ourselves. All of these things (and more) make up the magic of every ordinary day and if we are able to live in this magic, to feel and to dwell in it, we will find ourselves living with magic every day. These are the white spaces in life, the spaces in between the written lines, the cracks in which the sunlight filters into. Some of us swim in the overflowing of the wine glass of life, we stand and blink our eyes in the sunlight reaching unseen places, we know where to find the white spaces, we live in magic.” – C. Joybell

Giving over to the moment, the emotion, completely.

Isn’t it funny?

Life will always remain a strange thing…an enigma…the biggest variable in any one of our individual life’s plots…filling it with both pain and beauty. We can experience death and new life all in the span of one week. We can reach the most glorious highs on some levels, while simultaneously experiencing the lowest of lows. Funny that. Funny using an expression like “isn’t it funny” for something that’s actually not “funny” at all, but rather difficult, bizarre or uncomfortable.

When the writer of Ecclesiastes says, “there is a time for everything”, he makes it sound so neat in a way. 

Yes, he mentions things like a time to cry and a time to die; but it still sounds so ordered – like there is a rhythm even to those times, that they will follow on each other, that you will always be able to move from the one to the other. And yet, in our living life, we come to realise that those times aren’t “neat” or “rhythmic”, mostly they are intertwined – joy with tears, success with disappointment, and life with death. Which is so contra-instinctive for us – we WANT life to be more “reliable”, more predictable. We NEED life to be simpler. We NEED to hold on to the belief that tomorrow will be different…will be better…will be more. 

But life continues on its “merry” way, and tomorrow usually ends up being the same as today – complicated. Which means that we can (and often do!) spend a lot of time questioning the meaning of our existence, the sense our living holds, the reason for our being. Getting so caught up in thinking about life that we don’t live it. But, you might say, such a complicated mess is not worth calling life, never mind living it! And yet, it is what it is, and it remains so no matter our thoughts on the matter.

So why is it worth it? What is the significance of this quagmire? Where is God in all of this? “Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle, curved tunnels of leaf miners on the surface of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what’s going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise.” – Annie Dillard “Let children walk with nature, let them see the beautiful blending and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life.” – John Muir

We should not strive for peace and calm and simple, for it is only in the difficulty and the chaos and the mess that we can plumb the depths of who we are. You cannot be truly brave and courageous without having felt fear tinge your being and overcoming it. You cannot truly live without confronting the complex reality that life is. “I don’t believe that life is supposed to make you feel good, or make you feel miserable either. Life is just supposed to make you feel.” – Gloria Naylor In the fullness of the total experience, in our giving ourselves over to every piece of it, in our looking every part of life and death straight in the eye and conquering it; therein lies living. For if you’re not ready to die, then how can you live? So…hoohah! “To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.” – Mary Oliver