Indulgence

loosening grip

Oscar Wilde
Only the shallow know themselves.

While I'm writing this, a friend of mine is telling me he's dropping everything to go to the province and start from scratch. I told him how jealous, envious I was of his courage. He replied saying it's not courage, it's just that there's no reason for me not to. Well, I'm thinking that there's no reason for anyone not to just gather their things and start again. There's no reason that I can think of that will force us to stay in one place. Whatever those reasons are, they will always be attributed to a sense of sentimentality or nostalgia. Those feelings should be reactions; they are brought about as a reaction to something. But it shouldn't be a cause for inaction. That's how nostalgia and sentimentality become dangerous.

But then again, we stay because we put so much meaning and value to things that we cannot leave behind or give up. We attach ourselves to things and that's a dangerous thing. We have to learn to just let go, the proverbial cliche as it is. Whatever holds us to any given situation or thing is merely a feeling. Your proximity to the attachment doesn't exactly increase your affections for it. No matter where you are in the world, no matter how long ago it has been since that event -- you love something for what it was when you did. That never changes. You may have different feelings of it over time, but what matters is the knowledge that you did love it at one particular time. That never disappears or loses value.

I was chatting with my friend Morx and he shared with me a new poem of his and it was gorgeous. The poem was absolutely gorgeous and it was about this same topic. The poem had said, so eloquently, how all things fade and we hold on to it. The act of holding on is not so much as giving something up but giving in to the actuality that all things fade. It's a lovely poem.

It made me think about how tightly I hold on to things and how badly I let things go. There is, should be, more grace in the act of loosening your grip and slowly parting from that which you hold so dear.

So what is this all about, really? Since not everything should be taken for what it is? Maybe I'm starting to let go of something I should've let go a long time ago. Sentimentality and attachment is leading me to inaction. And that's not where I want to be. Just know that I loved something once and I did my best. But when it's time to go, it's time to go.

(picture taken 2004, from Queenie's phone -- Queenie, me and Jaypee; sometimes I put too much attachments on things that I should have let go along time prior but it was fun and you needed it at the time)

posted by wanggo @ 12:11 AM