To “let go” does not mean to stop caring; it means I can’t do it for someone else.
To “let go” is not to cut myself off; it’s the realization I can’t control another.
To “let go” is not to enable; it is to allow learning from natural consequences.
To “let go” is to admit powerlessness, which means the outcome is not in my hands.
To “let go” is not to change or blame another; it’s to make the most of myself.
To “let go” is not to care for, but to care about.
To “let go” is not to fix, but to be supportive.
To “let go” is not to judge, but to allow another to be a human being.
To “let go” is not to be in the middle arranging all the outcomes, but to allow others to affect their own destinies.
To “let go” is not to be protective; it’s to permit another to face reality.
To “let go” is not to deny, but accept.
To “let go” is not to nag, scold or argue, but instead to search out my own shortcomings and to correct them.
To “let go” is not to adjust everything to my desires, but to take each day as it comes, and cherish myself in it.
To “let go” is not to regret the past, but grow and to live for the future.
To “let go” is to fear less and to love more.
(Part of the closing ritual of the Hospice Training for Volunteers.)
I painted this mandala as a prayer for a couple of dear friends who are being asked to “let go” of unmet expectations and move into a new phase of their lives this year. Damn, that’s hard work.
I’ve been reading a lot (go figure!) on archetypes, and I’ve revisited Carolyn Myss and her book Entering the Castle. Myss loves the work of St. Theresa, so she takes St. Theresa’s Interior Castles and helps plumb the depths of it. St. Theresa wrote about the “reptiles” that roam around the lower rooms of our interior castle, biting, scaring, scarring, wounding us all the time. Myss writes, “Expectations are the reptiles of the worst kind, whether they are expectations of your sojourn into your Castle or any expectations you have of life….[including]you must first confront this sense of entitlement about God, so that you can actually encounter God.” (paren is mine)
It is so hard, so demanding, to have to let go of our expectations, our dreams and hopes, not only for our own future, but for the future of our children as well. We have them. I’m not sure we can NOT not have them.
But it seems that part of our mid-life growth process is having dreams and expectations turn to dust or ashes. We reach a certain time in our life, take a hard look, and realize, “Who’s life am I living anyway? This isn’t what I planned. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. I’ve done it all the best I knew how. I played by the rules, and I tried really hard. This shouldn’t have happened. What have I done wrong? Why is this happening to me? (or my children, or my family, or my friends…the list goes on).
Damned unmet expectations, and we find our house really IS built on sand. Our houses get blown away; our wineskin breaks, our dreams turn to dust. We seem to be at the end of everything.
And then, somehow, we let go. And it’s in the letting go in spite of all our fears and all the mind games—it’s in the letting go that new life appears.
I believe in resurrection. I’ve seen it over and over again. I’ve experienced it over and over again in my own life. I see it in the changing of the seasons and the bursting forth of the lilies in Spring.
So, here’s to my friends who find themselves at the end—again. I am praying for you as you’ve prayed for me. New life WILL come from the ashes.
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