Superglue: Fix or Folly

Letting go of worry has not been the easiest thing I have ever done. There have been many lessons about letting go from sages over the centuries and self help gurus of the modern age. But when I get my grip on a worry, it is as though my fingers have been sealed around it with superglue. I hold it up in front of my face and keep turning it around so I can see all sides, but I remain paralyzed to any other action. Over a few days, if I see that some edge of that grip has frayed by belief or torn by even a fragment of hope, I seal it up tight with another gluey drop. I did finally learn what letting go meant when I heard an acquaintance of mine define it. She didn’t use the old maxim about holding a bird too tight in your hand, squeezing it so tightly the bird suffocates and can’t use its wings to fly away. No, this one had to do with just a letter. Remember those? Words penned on a piece of paper, folded and sealed in an envelope (more paper), addressed (hopefully the most recent address), and stamped with the correct postage. All of that to hold your words in tightly. The letting go part? The letter slides from your fingers and through the mail slot of a squatty red box. With barely a glance, you have literally let go of your ideas, words, thoughts and maybe even worries. Understand please, this person I did not particularly like and I did not consider her especially wise. But there it is. A lesson in letting go learned almost thirty years ago, in another land, in what seems a lifetime ago from someone I didn’t like or truly respect. Have I ever seen this example in all my searches through quotations for this blog? No. It is, however, as indelible in my mind as black marker ink on a white shirt.

There is another aspect to this ‘letting go’ issue. I don’t want to let go of this memory, this fragment from my life, this brief intersecting with another human being. I have over time also learned that when I don’t let go of my worries. I am getting some kind of pay off. Haven’t quite got that one figured out yet, except to say that when I do let go of my worries, things that are not my responsibility or that I can’t fix, my life in the present goes much easier. I can find tiny creative thoughts and actions that become balms to my soul. But I have to want to let go. Otherwise I just maintain a never ending supply of super glue.

“It’s not time to worry yet,”

~ Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird