We've been back for a couple of weeks now from our annual Kauai vacation and our garden is finally planted with seeds sprouting. We are likely to have the latest first harvest ever, but that's OK. We have great Farmer's Markets around us so we won't starve for fresh, locally grown produce while we wait. I'm still trying to solve the mystery of why the sunniest part of my flower garden struggles. We lost some plants to a weird hot, cold, hot, wet spring and others just seem to be slow to take off. But I plod forward in spite of generally feeling incompetent and frustrated. The words "I don't know" fall from my lips with great regularity when it comes to gardening. I was a novice when we started all this 10 or so years ago, but by now one would think I'd know what I'm doing. I don't. And some days I don't even care.
Which brings me to my current state of mind (which is always the topic of this blog, isn't it?). I've had to "let go" (as all the therapists advise) of so many hopes, assumptions, and expectations in recent years. It's likely been a good thing to finally realize I have no real power to make the world and the people in it align with "Donna's Vision". But now I just feel like I'm actively letting go all the time.
Things that used to seem so important are not so much anymore, or at least my obsessive involvement in them is no longer so important to me: Politics and activism, for example, or watching the news and reading every newspaper and news magazine (although I aced last week's NYT News Quiz!); organizing people; taking leadership; and working on 'causes'; keeping up with pop culture; traveling domestically for the most part (we just cancelled a fall trip to the Southwest); fretting that I don't hear from my adult kids often enough; trying to change people who do things that I don't like; buying things for the house and garden -- buying things in general. I don't want any more stuff!!!!
I still live in a (too) big house with a (too) big yard, but I'm downsizing nonetheless. When I clean out the attic now, it's easier to say goodbye to more and more that I've hung on to. I'm no longer sentimental about "things" that I used to imbue with great significance. And I can begin to picture myself not living here forever, although that still makes me weep. I so love the home we've created and the memories of 42 years, and counting, created inside its walls and on this property. I'm slowly letting go of a collection of inanimate objects that represent the past.
I'm more accepting of things as they are and not as I want them to be. Letting go of grasping for something now or in the future (that is not real) or clinging to the past (also not real), is the essence of my yoga practice, which is very important to me. I'm finally understanding that the world does what the world does. The people in it are doing what they do. I accept all of it.
My therapist would be so proud, since I fought this tooth and nail when she explained "radical acceptance" to me when I struggled mightily to accept something I found unacceptable. I finally learned, through my yoga studies, that accepting doesn't mean condoning; that was my initial stumbling block in therapy. I confused accept with condone.
Yes, I have to accept what is, but I can take action on my own behalf to change my involvement with it. I can create boundaries. I can step back. I can stay or I can go. I can even take some sort of action, if I feel like it, but also I accept that my work might very well be futile and obsessively doing one more thing won't change that. I can't really change anyone/anything that is already there, already happening.
I'm still involved, engaged, active in ways that feel right to me. But I'm slower now, more discerning, more deliberate in deciding how to spend my precious time/energy/spirit. My family, my friends, yoga, meditation, physical and emotional health, democracy, the planet, doing nice things for others. That is really all I care about now, when it comes right down to it. I've ditched hope and regret in the process of letting go of "things", now only holding close that which sustains my heart and spirit. And it's all still a work in progress for sure.
Lest you think I live on some cloud of blissed out contemplation and occasional do-gooderism, I admit there are some days when the most important thing to me is reading a cozy mystery, binging Bridgerton on Netflix, crocheting one of my blankets for donation, going for a walk. And I can do all of that too, more and more often without feeling like a slacker for not being engaged in something "more important". Every day, every hour, every breath we spend engaged, alive, and being awake to life is ultimately the only thing, right? That present moment will usher us to the next and the next and the next, as life unfolds.
As my yoga teacher says about each new moment, "Oh...So this is what happens next." I love the exuberant acknowledgement of the present moment and that kind of radical acceptance, come what may.
At least, that's the view from here...©
