Letting Go
It’s been a busy week or so - much of it filled with ‘busy-work’, alas, alas; and this exhausting scramble to do what was required gave me the exquisite and needful lesson of letting go.
To give an example: a colleague at work is being unpleasant, destructive, combatative, and so on. This is not aimed directly at me, but occurs within a department I am part of, thus causing meetings that had always been cordial and productive to become, bewilderingly, tight-lipped with suppressions of rage. We all suffer, and in the end my students suffer because I’m not able to be fully present for them when things like this are on my mind. I walk from a meeting such as this and into a classroom and I struggle to not be annoyed by everything.
It’s busy work that drains the joy out of everything, if we let it.
And that’s why this is an important lesson. I was reminded yet again that garbage happens, and I have to be able to stand beyond its villainous whiff, deal with it in a way that is reasonably sane, and let it go. ‘Reasonably sane’, of course, is the test. Getting angry and reactive with those who are disturbed and destructive doesn’t make things any better for anyone. All one can do is extend compassion and hope that the person concerned will be able to see beyond his or her ego. And then one has to let go of outcomes.
My mantra has become, in this case, a vital way of reminding myself that I have other fish to fry. My work-colleague will not let anyone close enough to help, and the ego-madness that has crept into that sad soul can therefore only remain where it is currently festering, continuing to hurt the person who so dearly loves to nurse the pain. When a person is in love with pain and anger and misery - as this particular individual is - I have to remind myself that we are all free to choose misery whenever we wish to. This person is choosing again and again to embrace conflict and misery.
I respect that choice. And I’m taking a different road, thanks.
