Tag: Letting Go

Hovering Over Possibilities

(Title image: Photo by Victor Rutka on Unsplash)

Since I’ve been writing about non-attachment, I wanted to follow up with a description of what it feels like for me.

As an example, I’m currently waiting on medical results for a family member. And I can promise you, there is a particular outcome that I really want. It’s the one where everything works out without any problems and you can look back at what transpired and wonder what you were even worried about. All good!

But that’s a best-case scenario, and wish as we might, it’s not a guaranteed outcome, even when we assume it’s a guaranteed outcome. When reality comes out worse, the let-down can feel intense. I’ve experienced that too many times.

Gently, gently. Allowing thoughts to come and go as they please without holding on or pushing away.
(Photo by Dmitry on Unsplash)

So I’ve taken to holding my thoughts lightly, like you would hold a little bird in your hand. Not grasping them, just keeping my hand open and allowing them to flit in and out of it.

It feels like I’m hovering over the possibilities of what might transpire. I am aware of the potential outcomes, but not holding on to them. I don’t push them out of my mind completely. Rather, I fuzz my view of them as if with a softened gaze.

Then time stops. And coming down out of what is swirling in my head, I turn my awareness to what is going on right now. Especially what my feet are doing. How my soles feel pressed against the floor. Focusing on the sensations.

Always, when the possibilities get too intense and clear, I return to my feet on the floor. If my recalcitrant mind continues to swirl, I focus on my hands and pour my senses into what they are doing: tying shoelaces, making coffee, doing the dishes—noticing the movements and pressure, watching my fingers. Once I’m anchored in my body, my awareness reaches out again.

I know those thoughts, hopes and fears are there. I don’t try to repress them. I don’t try to analyze them. They simply come and go, and I return to the calmness of where I am.

Admittedly, some days it’s much harder than on other days. “Letting go” is a practice, not a destination. But even brief moments of respite are welcome.

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There’s also something to be said about the underlying fear of waiting for responses, the uncertainty that weighs so heavily upon us. I’ve always felt that one of the toughest times of my cancer experience was when I was waiting for scan results, biopsy results, even doctors’ appointments. That was the real test of “hovering” and it was one that I did not handle well at the time. But thankfully, relief came in the form of a treatment plan, a.k.a. a certainty of sorts. No, it didn’t make everything better, but it gave me a path to focus on.

The Satisfying Pleasure of Letting Go

If you’ve read my last couple of posts (here and here), you’ll know that I’ve been dealing with the frustrations of water leaks, never-ending renovations and unfortunate coincidences.

Hopefully, this will be the third and last installment of the trials and tribulations concerning this situation. But just to catch you up, the cabinets which were supposed to be installed Thursday, not in time for our houseguest’s arrival on Wednesday, but just a day late…were not.

Yet again, there were dashed expectations: one of the cabinets arrived with a crushed side and was unable to be used. So the innards of these cabinets are still piled up on and under the dining table and the place looks disheveled.

When things start blowing up, sometimes all you can do is sit back and enjoy the show.

And due to the completely unrelated construction taking place outside, which will prevent daytime access to our unit for several days, there will be no cabinet installation for at least another week, regardless of when the new cabinets come in.

But you know what? It’s okay.

I had wanted to have everything put together for our guest. That was not possible, so–admittedly after much jaw clenching–I completely let go. The crushed cabinet, the disruptive construction, I’m simply accepting it and that feels so good.

It really doesn’t matter when the cabinets are put up or what other monkey wrenches are thrown into the mix. We’ll get to closure when we get there.

Which is a good thing because on Saturday evening, I discovered another leak in the walls that soaked the new (still unpainted) drywall and flooded out the unit below us. And I’m totally serious. The inside of our hall closet sounded like a rainstorm.

Well, we needed rain…

I guess I could have been more stressed about it, but with everything that had already taken place, I shrugged. We notified out unit owner, we called the plumber, we waited for the leak to be fixed.

Another day, another leak, another disruption, another hole in the drywall. Still okay.

These are still problems that need to be dealt with. But whether it’s skillful mindfulness (probably not) or simply emotional exhaustion (more likely), it’s not getting to me and it feels amazing to stay calm under such circumstances.

I know I cannot avoid stressors in my life. So I’m trying to remember what this feels like. If I can draw on this experience the next time an upheaval occurs, perhaps I can slip into gentle acceptance and let reactive anxiety pass me by?

Managing Expectations: A Reflection

As I sit at home waiting for the stormy remnants of what used to be Hurricane Hilary to pass by, a bit of reflecting…

There is a saying attributed to Buddha: “The root of all suffering is attachment.”

While there is much that can be and has been written about this, I’d like to bring it down to something very concrete in my life.

It seems so simple, this letting go of our expectations. But we humans are hard-wired not to do that!

One of the wonderful attributes that we as humans have is the ability to plan. Yes, that’s been evidenced in very clever animals, but humans take it to a whole new level.

Where that incredible gift fails us is that in the process of planning, our goals and expectations become very real in our minds, and if they don’t play out as we had anticipated…well, sometimes we don’t deal with the disappointment well.

For instance, in such situations I experience stress and anxiety. Others may react with anger and frustration.

Regardless of the outlet (whether handwringing or yelling), it’s safe to say that the outcome is not pleasant for anyone. And yet letting go is hard when we are really counting on the expectation being realized. Or perhaps even worse, when we get lost in thoughts of how things could have been.

Consider this scenario: let’s say that following a leak in our apartment and subsequent slow repair process, two months later our water-damaged kitchen cabinets haven’t yet been replaced.

But wait, I get word that the cabinets are coming finally coming in this Friday, August 25th and will be installed the following Monday (28th)! Expectation established! And it’s not a small one because most of our kitchen and the entire dining room have been sitting in the living room area for over eight weeks.

Oh, how difficult it is to sit with what’s happening in the present moment — we’re always looking to see what’s up ahead or somewhere in the past. The greatest peace I’ve ever felt is to simply be here.

WOW, do I want this to get fixed! We have a house guest arriving on Wednesday the 30th who is supposed to sleep in the living room. Weeks ago, when she arranged to visit, I was sure that all the repairs to our apartment would have been done long ago. But now, between the cabinet installation and her arrival, I don’t have a lot of time to clear out the mess and get everything back in its place.

I cannot let go of the need for everything to go smoothly. But while I’m struggling with the burden of that need, I’m simultaneously living through the stress of, “oh no, what if it doesn’t work out that way???”

So there you go, a double-whammy. All this because although I know better, I latch on to how I want/need things to be. Either expecting perfect success or total disaster.

Letting go will never be as easy to do as it is to talk about. But in my brightest moments, I am able to step outside the confines of my thinking, move out of myself and get perspective on the present situation, accepting that I cannot predict and shouldn’t expect too deeply. That’s when I experience the highest level of calmness.

And then, as will happen, I forget and sink back into my small, highly personal mind, where I once again cling to having things be a certain way.

Finally, This Is My Real 5-Year Anniversary

I was going to write about something else for this week’s post until I realized that I had another five-year breast cancer anniversary to share: the end of my radiation treatment.

It had run for six weeks, five days a week — going to the cancer center became a daily habit. But on October 23, 2017, I rang the gong signifying the end of treatment, said my good-byes to the radiation oncology staff and left them with baked goodies.

Cancer treatment felt like a never-ending vortex of scary experiences…but it did finally end.

With 2022 being five years since my cancer diagnosis, I’ve had a number of anniversaries to share this year. What makes Oct. 23 significant is that it marked the end of all the “tough stuff” that people scare you with about cancer. By that date, I’d put the diagnosis, surgery, chemo and then radiation behind me.

Because 2017 had been a miserable year, when radiation was done I thought I could finally take a deep breath. I’d waited for this point in my treatment for a long time and decided that I would lose myself in the spirit of the holiday season.

The problem was, you never really get rid of all your concerns. You release some, but others show up to take their place. I finished radiation…but wait, there’s more! Now I was going on tamoxifen and that brought a whole new set of issues, and yes, fears, with it.

So I spent Christmas season doing my best to enjoy myself but the holidays passed by and left me feeling a little empty. I’d expected a lot out of them and they didn’t deliver.

I had wanted to be free of all my worries but that’s not how cancer works. In fact, that’s not how life works either. It took me five years to figure out that I couldn’t get what I wanted, but what I could make of it was beautiful in its own way.

Admittedly, it was a tall order. After cancer, I tought the world would shine with joy, but that wasn’t realistic. Cancer isn’t the kind of disease you say to, “done!”, brush your hands off and walk out the door. It tags along behind you, if not as the disease, then as its shadow.

Fast forward five years to now…ok, ok, I know what I got wrong back then.

I had felt like life owed me something amazing because it had put me through cancer. I thought I deserved a post-cancer life that was perfect. Of course, it wasn’t. And it still isn’t.

So if there’s something to celebrate, it’s that I learned a few things over the past five years.

This holiday season I’m not going to be expecting things to wow me. But I am going to be enjoying the fact that I am still physically active and working the same university job, expanding my horizons as a new yoga teacher and finding fun ways to spend my time. And mostly, that I have moved past the feeling of anger that I felt about cancer and found some gratitude to fill its space.

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I know I keep going on and on about how much better life is when you’re not carrying the burden of anger, but honestly, if I’d known that acceptance would lighten me up this much, I would have done it sooner!

Lovingkindness When It’s Hard

Lovingkindness (n.): a tenderness and consideration towards others (Oxford Languages)

Sonder (n.): the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own (Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows)

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One of my goals for 2022 is softening my views of difficult people.

This takes some mental calisthenics. There have been individuals in my life that have impacted me in negative ways, and trying to see around that is usually met with a great deal of internal resistance on my part.

But when we hold onto hurt, we sully ourselves, not to mention completely (and possibly unfairly) writing off the person whom we view as the cause of our pain.

There have been people in my life who seem to go out of their way to be cruel.

I need to stress that giving difficult individuals a second look to examine their internal motivations does not mean absolving them of all responsibility for their actions. What they did or said remains that and their role in your pain is not diminished. But in letting go and softening our own reactions, we heal ourselves and decrease the impact that the individual’s actions have on us.

What has been working for me is one simple thing: to pause and imagine what pushes people to be uncharitable. In my experience one of the main motivators seems to be fear. We all have our own ways of dealing with this emotional state, some of us may retreat and tremble (this would be me), others may lash out and attempt to control the situation that way.

I’ll go out on a limb and say that many of those in our lives that we perceive as “evil” may be running away from something. And their inability to deal with their fears and shortcomings makes them very pitiful indeed. The more thoughtless and controlling and misery-inducing an individual seems to be, the more fear they may well have bubbling under the surface.

If we can step back a bit, we can mitigate their power to upset us, because that’s when we see their behavior in a different context.

Let me offer an example: One of the most toxic bosses I ever had would go into “tyrant” mode, judging immediately and harshly, seemingly unable to manage her employees without bullying them. There was intense tension when she was around and I felt like I was never good enough, something that affected me deeply.

Difficult people may be fighting their own inner demons.

But I soon learned that she made everyone feel that way…and also that she was locked in an unhappy marriage and had little control over her personal life. So she established (and overestablished) control where she could. She hired young employees who would work for lower wages and greatly increased her profits, although it also resulted in a significant turnover because the conditions were psychologically distressing.

I dreaded work so much that it was only a matter of months before I resigned my position. I got myself out of there, a decision I never regretted. And I stress this because if a situation is bad, even if you can find some sympathy for the perpetrator, it never means you should stay there and take the abuse.

But understanding what a difficult person is going through can offer some balm for your soul as you shake off the effects of the negativity. Naturally, this is far easier to do from a distance, but it can also help create some emotional space for you if you cannot put physical space between the two of you just yet.

And in the context of a lovingkindness meditation, this makes it much easier to bring that individual into focus and offer them kindness and compassion for what they are experiencing.

It may help to consider this: true power comes not from expressing your dominion over others; it comes from understanding the reality of the situation and making the choice to respond with compassion.

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In the case of my former boss, upon searching for her recently, I was shocked to learn that she had founded a charitable organization to help children in need. All those profits that she had amassed had gone to a very good cause, as she now worked exclusively on a volunteer basis.

I’m so happy to have seen this giving, caring side of her. Wish she’d been able to show it to us.

And I sat there, staring at her photograph on my computer screen. That was her, certainly decades older, but different from the way that I had remembered her. So much more complex a human being. And instead of scoffing at the “old person trying to get into heaven”, I was filled with joy. Inside that being that I had only known as a tyrannical boss was a genuine caring person who was finally able to express her true loving nature.

Nothing could have made me happier.

Permission to Let Go

My mind is usually abuzz with thoughts about what I have to do, what happened in the past and what the future may bring. Imaginary conversations take up space in my head, dragging me down down rabbit holes. All that unnecessary mental activity can get exhausting.

Meditation offers a reminder that I don’t have to do that.

I recently attended another mindfulness retreat. It had been a stressful week with many worries. As I took my seat, thoughts swirled in my head about everything that had been going on. It felt like I was juggling plates over my head, trying to keep everything in the air. I was tensing without even realizing.

Whoa, buddy, how about giving it a rest?

And then it hit me like a bolt from the heavens: I could choose to let go of it all. There was nothing that I had to do and nowhere to be, except sit in stillness exactly where I was.

We practiced mindful movement. I have a habit of challenging myself by trying to make poses more difficult to make my muscles work harder, and I’ve found myself doing this even during retreats.

But this time, I let go of striving and took a simpler route. No need to set personal records, hold the pose longer or deeper; I wasn’t competing against anyone.

I didn’t need to do every movement perfectly, I needed to mellow out. It took more than a few breaths to bring myself down and feel the ground beneath me.

Sometimes I need a reminder that I can simply choose to stop the noise.

Not worrying about who was watching, what they thought about me or how I looked — what a concept. I gave myself permission to set all those pressures aside, and for the first time that week, everything calmed down.

Obviously, this is not something I do enough of. If I forget that I can simply let go during a formal mindfulness practice in a supportive community setting, then it’s not surprising that I tie myself up in knots during everyday life.

And everyday life is what really matters.

I’m still not good at this. But maybe each time I stop myself, I do so just a bit earlier. With time, I will get closer and closer to stopping before I even start. And that’s something I can look forward to.