Let It Go (You'll Be Fine.)

January is over , and now we can all begin the second half of 2020. Maybe I’m the only one feeling that? What a long, gray month, whereas February has already given us a SUPER BOWL WIN. Oh, so Karrie—there’s this game called football, and the Chiefs, the team that plays it here in Kansas City, are really good at it. Also, don’t go downtown today.

By now my resolutions are basically forgotten (lose something something pounds, work out every (other day? nah) once in a while. But Karrie and I realized we share a habit of picking a phrase or word to focus on each year, and that tends to stick.

For me, 2020 is the year of Let It Go. I guess I had to sing the song with my nieces 572 times before I stopped letting the word “fractal” take me out of the moment, and really let Elsa speak to me. Hey everybody, I just had the best idea! Let’s let that shit go!

I’m thinking that we can all agree that learning to let go of bad stuff is a good idea. But here’s where I’m going to slingshot right past fractal and cartoon family dynamics and hit another target.

What if we learn to let go of good things?

Yes, the person who recently rambled on about a quilt my family has protected for nearly 100 years suggests we let go of good things.

My mom lost her job last week. While I could write at length about how much I hope she lets go of the questions, replays and self-doubt that invariably surround events like that, that’s not exactly what got me thinking about my 2020 theme.

I’m reading a book that I thought she might like. Vulnerable writing from a woman who talks about emotions as if they’re in plain sight, as easy to describe as a car. “Silver, four-door, comes standard with the pain of feeling unknown even when surrounded by others.”

I was thinking, I can’t give Mom this book. I won’t have the passages that have helped me through some tough moments. Then I thought again. Those moments are gone. The passages came to me when I needed them. Reading them in a future moment could be like looking at smoke from a new angle. Not the same experience, ever again.

Let the book go. Mom needs it now. Comforts should be liberated to serve whomever has the greatest need, like a table at Joe’s KC. Work to enjoy and share, not to take things out of circulation. Comfort will come to us all in the right way, at the right time. I want to live with the peace of knowing that we have what we need. Especially when we choose to need what we have.

There is abundance.

Amen. Namaste. Go Chiefs.

 

 

(a note from Karrie, above is the best version I can do for a Chief’s Throw— I say this because I’ve been asked several times to make one.)


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