High on Happiness

Posts Tagged ‘Letting Go’

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Letting go of summer, of its flowering bright and green, the hills glow with late autumn’s olives and burnished rust.

Letting go the songbirds, the woods rustle with the whisper of falling leaves.

Letting go the star-spangled midnight, the sky turns azure and sings the dawn and the day.

In the great, sweeping harmony of being, time and the seasons roll on and all things ceaselessly transform.

Below the hills, beneath the boughs, the creek spreads itself smooth.  The clouds and sky and glowing colors echo from its surface, sighing the sweet serenity of letting go.

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Take time for some moments of ease in your life, some moments for letting cares go.  Few are the problems that will not wait, or benefit, from being forgotten for awhile.

Walk somewhere that you can see a tree, a flower, the broad expanse of sky.  Walk easily, as if all the time in the world was yours (for it is, you know, and you’re free to spend it as you will).

Sit on a patch of grass.  Rifle your hands through it and feel how alive it is.  Feel the soil beneath it, the stuff that gives birth to everything that sustains us.  Breathe the air; inhale its fragrances; feel its warmth.

Hear the world’s music.  The delicate rustling of leaves, the chirping of birds.  Pretend you’re a kid again: Cup your hands over your ears and roll them forward and back and listen to the sounds change and laugh at the miracle of hearing.

Look at the wondrous expanse of sky, its light veiling the cosmos.  Watch the heaped clouds, made of nothing but water, floating on the wind.

Study it all as if you were seeing it for the first time, or as if you had just been told that in two weeks you would be blind.  See the spectrum of hues and shades, the patches of light, of reflection, of shadow.  See the magnificent complexity of it all, the precision of its design—all purposeful, all pleasing.

Let it pour into you like warm honey.  Taste its sweetness.  Feel your connection to it, for this is your home.

The small pleasures, the moments of sweetness and ease, are balm for the soul.  Make time for them, and they will bring you healing and joy.

I got a happiness reminder from the snow on this first full day of winter.  It was another hundred-mile-an-hour day at work and when I walked from the office, I was carrying a lot of tension from the day’s unrelenting demands.

But as I rounded the corner to the parking lot, a little patch of melting snow on the rail fence that lines the clinic’s grounds caught my eye.  Yesterday it covered the rails completely, making smooth, rounded shapes of their usual angles.  But as it surrendered itself to the relative warmth, after the weekend’s storm, the snow was quickly melting away.

“That’s what letting go is like,” I thought to myself.  “It’s like melting.”

Like snow in the sun’s warmth, like a candy cane on your tongue, or ice cream on a summer day, it’s just a simple surrender.  Who needs the brittleness of tension knotting up their necks, their backs, their shoulders!  Let the warmth in; let it dissolve.

Dunk yourself in the warmth of kindnesses given and received, of the beauty of the day and of the rolling seasons.  Slow things down.  Feel the warmth of a smile.  Feel the satisfaction of work well done.   Let happiness churn up some warm joy and bubble the tension away.

Melt into the moment, with all its wonder and peace.  Melt into the simple gladness of being.

The other day I wrote about how I was stubbornly clinging to an irritation–stuck in a kind of perverted pride about how right I was in nursing  it, how deserving I was of something better.  You know the feeling.  It’s a tightness, a self-righteous clinging, a stubborn defense of your thwarted dream as the only thing in the entire world that could possibly bring you satisfaction.

But in truth, it’s clinging to those thoughts and feelings that prevents you from being satisfied by anything else.  One universal key for allowing happiness into your life is to begin with accepting what is before you.  Not to fight it, or resist it, or to cry that things weren’t otherwise, but to allow yourself to accept what is.

Sometimes we make it so difficult, this letting go of our wanting something else.  The feelings of disappointment, or resentment, or anger, or grief can be so very strong.   But only unhappiness comes from comparing what is with a mental image of something else, and telling ourselves that our story is better.

As long as we’re focused on the story, we’re blocking our vision of what exists now, of the possibilities and gifts the infinite present always holds.  By holding on to our story of how things could have been, or should be, we squeeze our perceptions down to a tiny sliver of reality, repeating to ourselves all the things that don’t match what we imagined would make us happy.

By holding a grudge against reality, we color it arid and mean.  But genuine reality is neither.  And if that’s how you see it, you haven’t quite opened your vision yet to all it has to offer.  True acceptance isn’t grudging.

Okay, you say, I can see that.  But how do you drop the story?  Despite the pain it’s causing you, how do you let it go?

First of all you have to recognize that you’re telling yourself a story (Clue: If you’re upset, it’s a story.) and then make a choice to let it go.  Here’s an image that works for me when I’m fighting to hold onto a story:  I think of my story as a shiny, glistening wasp that I’m clenching tightly in my hand.  As long as I hold it, it will sting me.  But if I open my hand, it will fly away.  It really is that easy.  You simply see the possibility of freedom from pain and choose to walk through its door.

Next you change your physical state.  You straighten your posture, let yourself breathe, take a good stretch, and tune in to what your senses are telling you.  Then get yourself into motion.  If you have been immobile, go for a walk.  Do some physical work.  Put on some upbeat music and dance.

If you were already engaged in physical action, let yourself sit quietly for a little bit, or lie down.  Then begin describing in words to yourself what your senses are telling you.  Describe what you’re seeing—the colors and textures and forms; describe what you’re hearing, and listen for the quietest, faintest sound.  Pay attention to what your skin is feeling—to the temperature and movement of the air, to the weight of your clothing.  Which muscles are tense?  What odors or fragrances you can smell?  What tastes and textures can you sense inside your mouth?

This little exercise—“Recognize, Choose and Act”—will give you immediate relief.  Even when you’re in the throes of deepest grief, it will give you a moment of respite.  And the more you practice it, the more powerful it becomes, and the more deeply it will carry you into the vastness of the eternal now—where all the genuine meaning and beauty and fun is, and the only place where your true power resides.

When I took a vacation day from work to give myself a three-day weekend, I conjured up a delicious story about how I would cultivate happiness by spending slow, leisurely hours reading and writing on my front porch, brushed by the balmy late-Spring breezes, enveloped in a symphony of birdsong.  But by the time the weekend arrived, the Fates wrote a story of their own.

I ended up needing to get new brakes put on my car, baking and delivering a cake to help out a pal who was in a real jam, hauling laundry to the Laundromat when a valve in my washer gave out, and having repairs done to some recent storm damage to my house.

On Sunday morning, when I woke to realize my three-day weekend had shrunk to less than 24 hours, I spun into a deep blue funk.  I felt cheated of my dream, and kind of mad, and sorry for myself all at the same time.  Definitely not where a happiness-enthusiast wants to be.

And then, as if I didn’t know any better, I spent a good long while nursing my snit, telling myself how much I had wanted my slice of quiet time, how rare my mini-vacations were, how many precious hours were gone.

Finally, I did a very wise thing.  I got out the lawn mower and started to cut the grass.  It didn’t really need it, but I figured pushing and pulling the heavy machine over my hilly landscape would let me pump out some of my mad.  And sure enough, it did.  Suddenly I was anchored in the present with an emerald carpet beneath my feet and billowing clouds floating overhead.  Instead of being lost in the make-believe world of the story I had wanted to live, I was living in a moment shimmering with color and light.  I put the mower away, grabbed my camera and spent the rest of the afternoon playing in the splendor of the day.

Stories, plans, hopes, dreams.  They’re all good things in their places.  They can move us forward toward our purposes.  But when life serves up a different reality than the one we had imagined, clinging vainly to our stories and plans only brings us pain.  Most unhappiness comes from comparing what we have to something we imagine to be better.  Yet when we look at what we have now—right this very minute—with unfettered vision and an open mind, what we have can be exquisitely beautiful, a moment brimming with possibilities.  And all it takes to see it is a willingness to let go of our phantom need to have it be something else.