I was thumbing through my journal the other day- a journal I started in January of 2004 and which I just finished a day ago- and found a passage I had written back in 2005 that rendered a smile and a sigh: If you try and you try and something just doesn’t want to “go,” don’t push harder; stop, let go, look around and breathe.
In other words, sometimes you stop trying to push your own agenda in your life. As much as we might like to take control of our lives, or think that we have total control, there is an unspeakable beauty to our vulnerability, our being part of an unfolding we have no hand in. Letting ourselves ride this wave, rather than trying to force it in any one direction, is an act of courage that can, ultimately, result in transformation beyond our own comprehension.
Lately, as more and more parts of my life here in Portland are coming to an end- such as giving notice at my place of work and cutting off all my hair- I feel a certain raw, silent beauty to these losses; it reminds me of the way the earth reclaims a downed tree or the way the ocean reclaims a bit of land, regardless of whether that piece of land is inhabited or not.
Death, transformation and change are as elemental and necessary to life as birth, growth, and stability, although as human beings, we tend to enjoy the creative, building stages more.
But just as we create our life and build upon it daily, there is a parallel gesture of what we let go of each day, what we let die, what we are willing to give up, whether we realize this or not.
This all hit me yesterday as I was sitting on my front steps looking at the late afternoon sunlight filtering through the branches of the big weeping willow tree in my front yard; there was something incredibly moving about the sight of sunlight playing with what might be seen as the obstruction of this giant tree, finding its way through the tiny spaces between the branches to dance all over the front yard. In that moment, my feeling of loss in watching my life here slowly unravel was met by an equal feeling of resigned beauty. I was aware of- although not at a word level- that even without my job of six years, my home town, my community, my language, my house, my car, everything I know to be daily life, I am still Tamara; perhaps more so. Perhaps everything I am and strive to be will have exceptional clarity as all these things about my life slowly dissolve and go, in a manner of speaking, back to the earth like a downed tree. After all, all we can ever count on in life is change- nothing is really ours for the keeping.
So while I let myself feel the emptiness of loss and a little bit of sadness in emptying out my life here, there is also a growing hope and eagerness of the adventures that await me, the friends I am yet to meet, the languages I will be learning, the homes I will be staying in, the strange food I will eat, the new music that will be filling my being, the new gifts that will bless my life with the room I’ve made.
With a deep sense of gratitude for everything and everyone who has blessed my life these last six years, I, in a sense, bow my head to the mysterious ways of the universe, surrendering to whatever this next stage of my life has to offer and teach me. I am keenly aware of my vulnerability as new life beckons on the other side of all this loss, all this change, all this unraveling.
There is a certain kind of beauty in letting everything fall away, a certain serenity in surrender.
