Last December my husband and I were invited to a holiday dinner. The invitation relayed the usual details: date, time, the hosts address, and a request to contribute a dish to the menu. But there was something different about this invitation. We were asked also to:

 

“Think about something that you might let go of this holiday season, that would open you up to something new. Be prepared to discuss with the group.”   

 

Though I understood this request, and appreciated how a conversation starter like this could foster conversation among a group of diverse guests, I bristled at the thought of it.

Coming three months into my intentional stepping away from my full client schedule for sabbatical–a.k.a. when I made letting go and opening up my full time job–I thought, “I don’t need this prompting, thank you very much. I got this.” The whole thing, took me back to my teen years when when my mom would yell into my room on Sunday afternoon demanding that I finish my homework before dinner, when I was already immersed in my assignments.

As I re-read this part of the invitation a few times over, I felt my inner self shrivel and burrow down. At the same time, my mind spun up things that we’d surely be busy with that night, and, that we would, therefore, not be able to attend. Regretfully, of course.   

But that was crap! I knew we’d go. And I knew I’d better come up with some response to share other than, “what the hell else is there to give up, than what I already have?!”

I started stressing about it, and overthinking it. What was a simple–not to mention very valid and worthwhile–question, was all too real for me. Because I had asked the question of myself so thoroughly as to actually act on it, to really let things go, I felt like this was far more serious than a casual dinner conversation. Do other people get how truly unsettling it can be to let go, even temporarily, aspects of oneself? Would they really think about how doing so starts to chip away at one’s identity, and sparks a series of further questions?

Things like:  

  • What’s left when you let go of your source of income, the service you provided in the world that you were paid for,  and which allowed you to contribute to your household and community?  
  • What more can be shed when you have deliberately curtailed the only way you have known how to be seen and valued in the world because you sense there’s something more to life? 
  • What remains when you consciously let everything become reordered to discover a new more nourishing rhythm, everything down to what time you brush your teeth in the morning?  

Eventually I recognized the irony in my struggle.

There, right under my nose, was my chance to let go of identifying too much with my own self-exploration and my own inward journey. I started to see that I might have the opportunity to let go of taking this whole business of letting go so flipping seriously. There WAS something else that I could let go: my ego’s obsession with the idea that I am the only one that really does this stuff.

What a revelation! And what a relief!

If I gave that up, perhaps there would be little lessons around me that I could take in and assimilate. There might be things I could observe from other people’s experiences of letting go, or their struggles against doing so, that would be instructive for me. If I let go of this achievement oriented, egocentric perspective on my growth, maybe I’d see that I’m actually not alone in my deliberate self-reconstruction and that I do have companions on this path.

That’s what I shared at that dinner. And what I learned from what other people shared were indeed nourishing morsels for my onward journey.