It was a great summer stateside for the family, and it was a challenging one, for a variety of reasons. And then we returned to Israel to move into a new house and reconnect with all (well, most) of our worldly belongings. All of which lead to some deep thinking and personal evaluation.
Western culture (I can't speak beyond that) has developed a strong tendency to hold on - to hold on to everything. To save, to keep, to horde, anything and everything. 10 for $10 is the sale at the grocery to get you to buy more; digital cameras allow for unlimited picture taking at basically zero cost; $1 for the first month will rent you a self-storage unit for everything that won't fit in your house; make payments, nothing down for big ticket items; unlimited talk/text/data.
And so we do - we keep everything (well, my mom doesn't, but lots of people do) because we never know when we'll need it, or want it. And the wanting and needing continue and the consumption and consumerism grow - just looking at the things my kids acquired this summer, and it wasn't even that much.
But beyond the physical items, moving from a micro view of our personal day-to-day world out to the larger, macro view beyond ourselves (that's for you, dad), we find ourselves also holding onto our friends (thank you email, Facebook and the web in general). I would argue that this is probably better than worse for us. Maintaining connections we have made in our lives can be meaningful and fulfilling. On the flip side it can also feel burdensome and stifling as we hold on to the past, trying to remain as we once were for those times when we engage with our past.
Holding onto the past, seems to me, to be the most challenging of the opportunities to let go, to move on, to grow and adapt to life. I have a group of girl friends (well, there is one guy so far in the group) that dates back to middle school days. We get together for wine and catching up when I'm back in town over the summer. It had probably been 10 or more years since we had seen each other. And our first few get togethers ended up being rehashing and reminiscing about our days together as pre-teens. It was delightful and a bit trippy. But then, over time, we have moved on to new topics and conversations, allowing our relationship to (thankfully) grow beyond those middle school antics and mature into our new lives as working women, married women, divorced women, mothers, aunts, etc.
There are other relationships, though, where it is harder to let go, harder to move on. Our family, and our newly acquired family when we get married, are tangled up in all manner of complicated interpersonal relations and histories. On the one hand, we go back forever with our parents and our siblings and really there is little that isn't known in that circle. But then with our in-laws, we seem to look for that level of intimacy but of course can't find it and that can lead to difficulty and frustration. On the one hand, we are trying to grow and emerge as adults within the circle of our family and can find ourselves hindered and held back by the previous image our family had of us, and on the other hand, we want our in-laws to know that whole history so that they can understand where we are coming from when we say or do things - to help them have a context for behaviors.
So the challenge ahead, which, I believe we often don't or can't recognize is the need to just let go - to let go of who we thought people are (he's not your little brother, she's not your baby girl, etc), what our histories and stories are, and what we think behaviors might mean within the framework of our lives. It's a leap, a leap of faith, to just let go of what we know, what is safe and comfortable, and embrace the new for what it is and not worry about what it isn't.
Western culture (I can't speak beyond that) has developed a strong tendency to hold on - to hold on to everything. To save, to keep, to horde, anything and everything. 10 for $10 is the sale at the grocery to get you to buy more; digital cameras allow for unlimited picture taking at basically zero cost; $1 for the first month will rent you a self-storage unit for everything that won't fit in your house; make payments, nothing down for big ticket items; unlimited talk/text/data.
And so we do - we keep everything (well, my mom doesn't, but lots of people do) because we never know when we'll need it, or want it. And the wanting and needing continue and the consumption and consumerism grow - just looking at the things my kids acquired this summer, and it wasn't even that much.
But beyond the physical items, moving from a micro view of our personal day-to-day world out to the larger, macro view beyond ourselves (that's for you, dad), we find ourselves also holding onto our friends (thank you email, Facebook and the web in general). I would argue that this is probably better than worse for us. Maintaining connections we have made in our lives can be meaningful and fulfilling. On the flip side it can also feel burdensome and stifling as we hold on to the past, trying to remain as we once were for those times when we engage with our past.
Holding onto the past, seems to me, to be the most challenging of the opportunities to let go, to move on, to grow and adapt to life. I have a group of girl friends (well, there is one guy so far in the group) that dates back to middle school days. We get together for wine and catching up when I'm back in town over the summer. It had probably been 10 or more years since we had seen each other. And our first few get togethers ended up being rehashing and reminiscing about our days together as pre-teens. It was delightful and a bit trippy. But then, over time, we have moved on to new topics and conversations, allowing our relationship to (thankfully) grow beyond those middle school antics and mature into our new lives as working women, married women, divorced women, mothers, aunts, etc.
There are other relationships, though, where it is harder to let go, harder to move on. Our family, and our newly acquired family when we get married, are tangled up in all manner of complicated interpersonal relations and histories. On the one hand, we go back forever with our parents and our siblings and really there is little that isn't known in that circle. But then with our in-laws, we seem to look for that level of intimacy but of course can't find it and that can lead to difficulty and frustration. On the one hand, we are trying to grow and emerge as adults within the circle of our family and can find ourselves hindered and held back by the previous image our family had of us, and on the other hand, we want our in-laws to know that whole history so that they can understand where we are coming from when we say or do things - to help them have a context for behaviors.
So the challenge ahead, which, I believe we often don't or can't recognize is the need to just let go - to let go of who we thought people are (he's not your little brother, she's not your baby girl, etc), what our histories and stories are, and what we think behaviors might mean within the framework of our lives. It's a leap, a leap of faith, to just let go of what we know, what is safe and comfortable, and embrace the new for what it is and not worry about what it isn't.
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