Let Go

Posted on | November 24, 2009 | No Comments

A week ago, I called my mother to ask about Thanksgiving plans. I had a vague idea about what our family might be doing this year, but I hadn’t heard about anything concrete. When her response involved saying, “Oh, I don’t know. I was thinking, maybe…,” I started to panic.

We didn’t have a plan. Not having a plan is not an option. We had to have a plan! Plans mean organization, logic, order and control. No plans – well, that’s a black hole I don’t like going down.

Some people would probably call me a control freak and I’ll admit that there are definitely times when that’s true. I like control. Even when I know it’s just an illusion, I like having that illusion because it makes me feel safe. I’ve never met a “to-do” list that I didn’t like. In fact, I love just about any kind of list, to-do or otherwise. I have a paper calendar because I’m afraid a digital one would lose my valuable information. I write blog posts weeks in advance, as an insurance policy in case something happens and I can’t write for awhile. During all my years of music lessons, I never mastered improvisation because I clung so steadfastly to the sheet music that clearly delineated which notes came next. I’m just not good at letting go.

So when I came across a Zen Habits article about giving into the moment and forgoing any kind of plan, I thought I might actually have a heart attack. Don’t plan? Don’t worry about the future? Don’t be proactive? The article was essentially advising me to live out my worst nightmare!

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that letting go is precisely what I need to learn. There are so many things outside of our control, so many things that happen whether we want them to or not. Much like trying to hold sand in our hands, the tighter we hold on to our thin grasp on control, the more it will just slip through.

Over the past three or so months, I’ve had a crash course in letting go. My time has been dominated by one thing after another, leaving me with very little time for myself and feeling like I had very little control. And while my gut instinct is to still try to salvage the situation and attempt to regain the upper-hand, in truth, it feels like I’ve just been along for the ride.

I can choose to be miserable and upset about that lack of control; it is my nightmare scenario, after all. Or I can choose to let go and make the best of my time. This doesn’t mean abandoning my goals or avoiding all plans. It simply requires that I be flexible enough to roll with the punches when they come. We may find that, in doing so, we’re able to discover something we weren’t even aware of.

I did eventually find out what my Thanksgiving plans were. I know that I’ll be with family and I’ll be giving thanks. And right now, that’s enough. Not a bad lesson to learn during the busiest time of year.

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