Letting go
Enlightenment! Now, that’s a word that I am pretty unfamiliar with. I am enlightened enough to be aware of the distance between me and ‘enlightenment’. In the midst of raising two hyperactive kids, managing a household and meeting work commitments, I have not yet experienced the lightness of being (that’s the default state of enlightened souls, right?). However, there’s something that I have experienced- a realization that sparks of enlightenment can engulf you at any place and time. It can happen in the Himalayas, during a stroll in a nearby park, or while cleaning your toddler’s wardrobe. In fact, utter chaos seems to be the perfect setting for moments of sudden clarity. Chaos as in a little girl’s wardrobe! The wardrobe that had been earmarked for cleaning at the end of summer, and then again in autumn. Winter arrived, and the wardrobe remained an unchanging fixture in the midst of changing seasons. Clothes piled up- summery clothes, warm clothes and heavy-duty winter clothes- all thrown together into overflowing racks. The tipping point was when attempts to stuff one more pile of clothes into the racks resulted in a cloth avalanche. That moment was the trigger, forcing me to drop everything else, roll up my sleeves and get on with the long-pending task. It meant pulling out all the clothes into a heap on the bed and sorting them out one-by-one. And making life-changing decisions on which ones should stay and which ones should go away. There were dresses which I had hidden from my toddler because she was obsessed with them. She would wear them, and then refuse to ever take them off. You had to literally pry them off her while she slept. There were still others that sparkled as new, because junior never touched them.
It is easy to decide what to do with the frayed, well-used ones- the faded colors and weathered seams decide it for me. But the sparkly, unused ones confound me. Should I give them off straightaway, so that they may be put to better use? Or should I wait for a couple of years, and then pretty much do the same thing anyways? BTW, what’s the logic behind waiting for a couple of years? Junior is not getting any smaller, and the clothes that barely fit her now will surely not fit in a year’s time. And goodness, she never even touched them when they fit perfectly! Why waste cupboard space for 2 years, and your precious time and energy at the end of those two years, when you are anyways going to end up doing what you can easily do at this very moment. Why carry the relics of the past, in our cupboards, or in our lives? What do we stand to lose, if we let go of the junk accumulated over the years? What do we stand to lose, if we don’t let go?
