So vividly I remember this last day walking on the Camino. Knowing I’d soon be saying goodbye to the simplicity of a normal day there. Getting up before the sun, pulling on my boots & hoisting my pack before trudging out along The Way.
Bidding farewell to all of it had as deep an impact on me as actually being there to begin with. Knowing I was only going to be at it a single week meant it was always in the back of my head that I had to savour it as much as I possibly could.
Makes me think of other times I’ve had to let go of something meaningful to me. Moments when I’ve known a situation wasn’t good for my well-being, but I so desperately wanted to hold onto it anyway.
One of the illusions of maturity is that when you’re older, you’ll somehow gain wisdom. The fallacy of this is that just because you experienced a setback, or a complete failure even, that wisdom doesn’t automatically result from the situation. One can be faced with the most obvious life lessons and continue to respond to it all in the same old predetermined manner.
Breaking out of that pattern seems to take a certain amount of persistence. I will NOT keep responding to adversity by banging my head against this wall.
Yet that’s how so many of us approach sick and twisted circumstances. I know that if I just stick with this at all costs, then this time it’ll magically turn out differently.
Nope. Just stop it. Quit. Give up the illusion.
I so enjoy the metaphor of each of us carrying round a huge rock. It’s individual in it’s size and density – some folks just don’t have any use for carrying a small boulder, but they are the exception.
If you were to fully let go of that rock that’s weighing you down, what’d you even have left? My personality is so steeped in holding onto that rock.
It’s my rock, after all. My entire persona is this rock, and I find myself hunched over it quietly insisting that I could never let it go.
‘Mine,’ I whisper pleadingly. It’s exactly because it’s so dreadfully painful that one has to drop it. ‘Not yours,’ a voice responds. No idea whose voice that was, but the message was unmistakeable. Drop it.
Drop the rock. You might think you could always go pick it up again, but why would you even want to? Just drop the damned thing.