As I pack up my life to move not only house again, but half-way across the world back to my mother country after living abroad in ol’ bright lights, big city London town, it occurs to me to reflect on just who is returning ‘home’…
Surrounded by the very real limitations of the few boxes the shipping company allowance has just delivered I am surprised, as many of us are, at how much has accumulated in my physical house after just a short 4 years. The juncture affords me a reminder of my metaphorical house…a choice: which parts of this life do I chose to take with me into the future? Which do I really need? Do I take only what serves me for the future I wish to create? Or do I box everything up as is, drag it half-way across the world to set up the old anew, allowing only small and awkward spaces to try to fit the new around, wondering why this piece doesn’t quite fit into my new space; why the thing I loved so desperately in the eighties, or nineties doesn’t work so well with more recent acquisitions…
What has served me well on the journey and continues to do so? What has served its purpose at the time it was needed but is best now left behind or passed onto another? Which acts as but an unconscious encumbrance, holding me hostage to a former version of myself or my life that now no longer serves?
What sentiments have I held onto for far too long, gathering dust in long forgotten recesses that when I pull them out, give me cause to go to a place emotionally I no longer need to… to give me ammunition for an old fight that does not need to be won, or fuel for an old fire whose embers died long ago?
Some items surprise me and make me wonder why I ever acquired them to begin with…how strange I’ve chosen to hang on to them and allowed them to occupy precious space, when any court of law would surely uphold my plea of ‘Temporary Insanity” for my choice in that moment ? Surely, it seems sensible to leave those behind also?
And funnily enough with each box I give to charity, every bag I recycle or throw out, a lightness overcomes me. A sense of liberty as I make the decision to let go. To surrender the old and invite the new with the openness and possibility that only new beginnings afford, even when I’m not quite sure what the new yet will be.
[Tweet “…surrender the old and invite the new with the openness and possibility”]
Thing is, we don’t have to wait for a forced juncture – with each and every moment we invite infinite possibility for ourselves with the choices we allow. About what we chose for our future, in this moment?
So with the final box packed, as I sit in the uncomfortable void of saying goodbye to possessions that have been the extensions of my identity, and an uncertain future, I laugh to myself remembering the words of a wise woman in my life who once shared with a knowing wink: *“All I’m sayin’ Sugar, is there ain’t no room for the Porsche when the Mini’s in the driveway!”*
Ahhhh, the voice of reason 😉 And so, I ask what will you chose to let go of today?
