Letting Go

There’s a line from a Wailin’ Jennys song titled “Heaven When We’re Home” that goes like this:

“I’ve been a fool, I’ve been cruel to myself, I’ve been hanging onto nothing when nothing could be worse than hanging on and something tells me there must be something better than all this”.

Whether it’s a thought, habit, grudge, expectation, or relationship, we’ve all found ourselves in the revolving door of a behavior pattern that takes more than it gives. Unfortunately, we often don’t recognize the negative consequences of holding onto nothing when nothing could be worse than hanging on until we find ourselves suffering an injury of some kind, be that emotional or physical, or both. It makes sense – love can be blind, fantasies can sweep us away, the idea of leaving can be scarier than staying, the comfort of the known can trump the discomfort of the unknown, needing to be right can feel more powerful than admitting when we’re wrong, and the unspoken agreement to live inside the mold of other people’s rules can masquerade as peace. There are so many different ways we can fool ourselves into believing that nothing is something we need. What a gift it would be to understand the difference between nothing and something in your life.