Love and Letting Go

There have been countless songs about it and I continually come across beautifully expressed lines from wise teachers on the subject. It is this notion that true love requires us to allow the object of our love to be free. It is a profound truth. And yet, it is not what we instinctively do. It is as though we are hardwired to hang on for dear life to anything or anyone we love or connect with. I rub up against it with people when I start wanting more from someone than the conditions are ripe for. I rub up against it with my dog, whose inevitably short life span I began fretting over from the moment he came home at 10 weeks old. Or, when I look at my kids running to school with their backpacks, which are half the size of their 6 year old bodies, swinging on their shoulders and I beg that this time doesn't go any faster. I rub up against it when I fear that I won't be able to continue getting by financially with my work that I love. I rub up against it in writing this blog, in wanting it to be something people respond to. It is all the same thing, though it might not seem like it at first. It has a distinct appearance. Though others might not notice it, I sense the difference in me. My mood gets slightly hardened as if I am bracing against the wind, my mind busy, my voice tougher, my vision narrower, my smile selective, my eye contact with others limited. And, it happens in subtle ways throughout the day. It is amazing really. Its persistence is commendable. So much so that I now understand why I should treat this part of me nicely, but that's for later.

To let what is important to me be free is to recognize its beauty, to know its value, to respect its fullness and its own time frame. But, to do that requires trust. When I have the fear of letting go of some tightness around something or someone, even slightly, as if taking a knot out of my shoelace and not undoing it completely, but making it loose enough that if I kept walking it would come undone -- when I can do that and have a mere drop of grace to say the word "trust," a  calm seeps through me, like a pleasant shot of relief through my veins. I ask myself, "can I trust here and let go instead?" If I can ask the question, then I am already at the place of responding, "yes, I can."  Not only can I, but there is further relief in knowing that there is nothing else to do. I just need enough courage to ask the question. If I place loving in this world as what matters most to me, then I must bow down and trust. Though I am not religious, I feel like I know what devout people get down on their knees for, why people might open their arms, palms up to the sky, and shout out some praise. It's a two way street, too. I trust in love and in loving I find trust. A double opening and a knowing that in this realm there is no where hard to fall. There are endless billowy cushions on which to land.

And so, there are days when I lose trust and just need to get by, however unpleasant. And, there are days when I remember to ask the question that brings the slightest opening, a sliver of light that lets the river flow again. That ebb and flow is how it goes; it is the path. In order to remember to ask for trust, I keep practicing and the roots of it get deeper and the wind shakes my branches less violently. I stay longer with an ease in my face, a softness in my eyes, an openness in my chest and arms and I smile more, letting it all in.  So, with the holidays approaching, too, I remind myself that there is no better time to love and let what I love be free. I can give myself permission to enjoy people as they are, the hectic nature of these two weeks as joyful in and of themselves with whatever they entail. What feels overwhelming, I can set free, which is what it needs to be anyway, and then remarkably the things get done (if they are of that sort) or the feeling releases, or the relationship surprisingly shifts without my doing something. I can control less, keep my heart open, and trust. From that place, I have nothing to lose and the birds can fly from the birdhouse in my heart and I know they are free to return without my beckoning call.