Collections

I’ve spent the past week getting rid of my stuff. Yeah a lot of it was junk, but there were some treasures in there. They just wouldn’t fit into our new little house. They weren’t functional for our new city lifestyle, they’d just clutter up the place, keep us from getting the most out of living in the city. So we had to make some tough calls, and let loose of things we’ve collected from around the world. Truthfully, I feel better.

I think most of us spend our lives trying to collect—people, experiences, things—but they aren’t really ours, and they don’t last. Times and people change. The second we start thinking of some place, some thing or someone as our own, it loses something, we lose something. We aren’t supposed to own or touch or name or define everything, we’re just supposed to do our living in the milieu of it all. We’re to enjoy and fight and live and observe and experience and absolutely be engaged with all of it—but we aren’t supposed to hold onto any of it, or use it to get through life.

But we DO--all of us have had experience with holding too tightly, hanging onto someone or some time in our lives, the past or the future. It’s the stuff dreams are made of. We use these things, along with countless other addictions, to get through the hours, trying not to feel the emptiness, pain and difficulty of the present. You would think that the answer would be not to get too attached to people or experiences and live as though you could take it or leave it all—but that is not the answer, trying to live above the pain. Feeling pain is a requirement for living life. I don't know, maybe the answer lies somewhere between feeling all the pain and joy of every attachment, while still maintaining the ability to throw it out when the time comes.

Kind of a bummer really, seeing life as a constant managing of one’s attachments, fears, commitments, highs, lows, emotions and pains. But, if we can see it as being a part of a much bigger LIFE that one gets to observe and feel and be a part of, maybe it can be freeing. We’re there to feel and know beauty and pain, and it IS real, if just for a moment. We’ve got to have the faith to believe it's real--even when ordinary. That’s better than defining, owning and holding onto a good moment, not willing to move from there, afraid it might be too long before the next one shows up.