Ready to let this go

I returned home to my apartment in Venice last week with the urge to go through all of my belongings and minimize, minimize, scale back and lighten, the way that living out of a suitcase for 1.5 months in Puerto Rico and feeling like I had more than enough can do to a person.

I spent a lot of my time in Puerto Rico going on long, present walks around my aunt’s neighborhood in Guaynabo. I was fully immersed in those walk, feeling what was ready to be let go falling off me and what I needed to take in as nourishment from the tropical climate, with all my senses, in every sense, finding its way to me, seeping into me.

Finding myself ready, wanting to let go of physical things coincided with deciding I was ready to let go of certain stories, ideas and perceptions that I realized were starting to feel clunky, heavy or unnecessary. The most recent time someone asked me, meaning it as a compliment, “Why aren’t you married?” I didn’t feel the need, desire or defense to respond. Just a shrug and smile.

And then, as if my body was responding and saying it was on board with all of this letting go, I got super sick, an intense 24-hour stomach bug that humbles and comes as quickly as it goes and leaves me remembering, once again, how very lucky I am to have my every day health.

I don’t really know how else to end this, or what the ending is of continuing to let go, but I know I’m ready.

The most relevant response

I had the idea that tonight I was going to write here something related to a postcard a friend sent me from Japan, something I’ve had written in my head for a while. That, and maybe watch the new Love Island UK season premiere. Then, I got back from yoga, had dinner and have had a heavy headache since. I don’t get headaches often at all anymore, which is nice. (I think since I started meditating—and overall developed more practices and space to listen and respond to my body and its signals in a more supportive way.) It also feels like a lot, I think because I’m no longer used to it. I’m reminding myself I just got back from traveling, was at altitude and in freezing temperatures skiing in Colorado, and looking at a screen most of the day, so my body and brain are probably responding to all that.

In the Vedic meditation community we talk a lot about “relevant responses,” which I think requires 1) present moment awareness and 2) the ability, and choice, to align, which may mean surrendering an expectation or prior idea. And in any event, meaning this event, it didn’t feel right to force write what feels like a special story post, because that’s something I want to enjoy. It did feel right to take an ibuprofen, which I also don’t do often, and also to write this post on relevance. And somehow writing it has not worsened my headache, and actually felt good.

What is mine

I wrote before about the importance, freedom and benevolence I’ve found in understanding what isn’t mine—to take on, carry, understand, process, etc. (A therapist would probably call these boundaries from codependence or enmeshment? I’m currently reading Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself by Nedra Glover Tawwab.) At the same time, that clarity also makes it more obvious to me what is mine, and, as a result, makes it ever more important that I take responsibility for that. And something we’re always responsible for, I continue to remind myself, is how we react, or, more ideally, *respond* to any situation. (A “response” factors in an extra bit of time for conscious choice, and I’ve found meditation so very helpful in moving me from reactions to responses.)

I think we’re each given a little packet of things in this world that are our LEGOs of life to build with, play with, work through, create with and understand; challenges and inclinations and interests and such. Sometimes we may build with others using our own set, but we still need to take responsibility for our pieces. And even if we don’t particularly like all of our pieces, well, that’s our set, that’s set, and maybe what we can do is use them to make something we love.

Felicidades!

In Puerto Rico, where I am now, it’s common around the holidays and this time of year for people to wish each other “Felicidades.” The direct translation of this is simply, “Congratulations.”

The direct translation of “Happy Holidays” is “Felices Fiestas,” which people also say, but I love how freely given the overarching “Congratulations!” is. Walking by someone, checking out at the supermarket, greeting a neighbor. Because why not congratulate each other, and ourselves, for all of it, and for over a month (if not more??). Life is to be celebrated, and we can always find reasons to celebrate. (And they do in Puerto Rico, and that’s another reason I love it here. We have Three Kings Day to come still, too.)

So, felicidades! This time of year, and always. For being here and just being you and always finding reasons to be proud of ourselves and celebrate.

Everything has the meaning we give it

Happy New Year! Today, on a milestone on this one timeline we’ve created to track and measure our lives and other things, I find myself reminding myself that this day is like any other days, in that it can be, and is, whatever we want it to be. January 1, a new year, a Sunday, a day. Today, like all things, anything, everything in life, has the meaning we give it.

Happy New Year, all the same! And all the different.

This isn’t mine

I do this thing to help myself set an energetic or emotional boundary, particularly when it feels challenging to do. I say, “This isn’t mine.” This is not mine to carry, react to, spiral around, or emotionally labor over when no one has asked me to. (And it’s no help to anyone, anyway; in fact, it’s usually detrimental to all, as well as the cause of self-imposed suffering.) Sometimes when I really need to really emphasize it to myself, I’ll do a whole hand motion thing and even look myself in the mirror and say it. (This is not mine.)

I also heard something recently about how learning to take things less personally is an indicator of personal growth. This feels like part of that.

Here in the forever present

You know when you really start to understand something on a deeper level, when it’s not just a thought in your head?

For me, I can feel it dropping into my body, the escalator in my head going down into my being, and even—when it really hits—becoming a way of being. In the past couple days, that integration has been around the concept of the forever present: that all we ever have, all we ever are (so, everything!) is right here, right now. That even when we’re remembering, even when we’re imagining, even when it feels like we’re stretching beyond time and place, we’re still here in the present. And that feeling, feeling into that concept now, feels so freeing. Everything in the forever present.

I’m not the type of person

I remember reading one of comedian Chelsea Handler’s memoirs during one high school summer, and her saying, through a story of a dinner party, that people who say “I’m the type of person who…” or, “I’m not the type of person who..” are usually the exact opposite of what they’re saying. I found it insightful and funny, and it made me more aware of when I say it—and also when other people say it.

I played these games with myself throughout heavier times of quarantine to stretch my brain or whatever a little, like eating with my non-dominant hand in attempt to become more ambidextrous (it’s kind of working!). One of them was to put a moratorium on “I am” phrases. Like, what would happen to my sense of identity and self, as well as my habits and thoughts, if I wasn’t labeling myself based on past patterns and expectations dragged in from the past, and just let myself be? Honestly, it felt very freeing!

In fact, I may try this again today. And this time, I think I’ll play with extending it more to those around me. Like how may people show up, what may our interactions be, when it’s just us in that moment, rather than past ideas or conceptions of them? Of us?

Everything is a theme

I heard someone say recently that “everything is a theme.“ I first thought of that in relation this blog and creating this space to write, reflect and create in a time when I was called to create more space in my life, often in playful ways, and how this has been, and is, a place to identify and understand themes at various points in my life, to process the past, to be with the present and to look toward the future, ideally, with more conscious awareness and loving attention.

I also found myself seeking a theme, wanting to identify a pattern, mostly because I often find it fun to play around with ideas and ideas identification. I didn’t have one for a while (like, a few days), and then it came to me quietly: patience. How fitting for it to enter that way, too, quietly, over the course of a few days, as I rest back into a month in Puerto Rico, a place where everything feels lusciously slower, a place that is always so patient with me.

That is growth

Someone pointed out to me once that I said, “that’s growth!” a lot, and that they liked that I celebrated that, even the small things. This, in particular, was after something very silly that I can’t remember and I’d said it as a joke, but I appreciated that, because I didn’t even really realize I was doing it, or had done it other times before. (And that, I guess, shows us in and of Itself how valuable, and even critical, other relationships are to reflecting back our own growth, and, as a result, encouraging us to grow even more!)

My therapist called them “sparkling moments,” I think, which reminds me of the little Christmas lights I see twinkling in my Tía Nora’s neighborhood in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, where I sit outside writing this as I listen to the little coqui frogs chirp.

When I was here a year ago, I wasn’t writing here. This place did not yet exist, this blog, and now, here we are. That’s growth!

Allowance

I’ve realized recently that a lot of what comes to me to write here, much of what I anchor around in a form of metaphysical balance, is around allowance.

Let it go, let go.

Let it be enough.

Let it be good.

Let it come.

Let yourself receive.

Live, and let live.

The letting, the surrender, the allowance, the trust of it all, I’ve continue to come to understand, more and more, as maybe the most powerful and empowering thing I can do. So, I allow. I allow it all, to unfold, to come in, to show the way, to guide me, to be big. To enliven my life and help me live, to be even more alive.