Note: This insightful reflection is offered by Terry Chapman PhD

Why, oh why, is it so hard to let things go?  And to let people go?  We will always have them with us in spirit, but as humans, we try very hard to hold fast to everything, fearing perhaps, that when other people and our possessions go, there go we also.  I divested much of my collected items of little consequence when moving into a cozy condo: music albums way too heavy, old stones from God knows where, assorted jimjams and treasured books—but not all of them!

 It’s ok to hold on to those items that reflect you at your core being: for me books do that and so do fishing and fly-tying items, hoarded on my den desk. And music, especially classical romantic era, refresh my soul and sooth my mind and being.  So, take heart and take a long dispassionate look at your “stuff” and separate the wheat from the chaff; most of it is truly only chaff!

Robert Frost wrote a poem called “Acceptance” about how the other members of the animal kingdom deal with letting things go, for a peaceful nighttime anyway. 

Acceptance

When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud
And goes down burning into the gulf below,
No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud
At what has happened. Birds, at least must know
It is the change to darkness in the sky.
Murmuring something quiet in her breast,
One bird begins to close a faded eye;
Or overtaken too far from his nest,
Hurrying low above the grove, some waif
Swoops just in time to his remembered tree.
At most he thinks or twitters softly, 'Safe!
Now let the night be dark for all of me.
Let the night be too dark for me to see
Into the future. Let what will be, be.'

Sincere thanks to Terry Chapman for sharing his wisdom with us

Watercolor by Liz Sorensen Wessel