Letting Go

I was looking at a book “Plain Living: A Quaker Path to Simplicity” during Meeting this past weekend. I was inspired by a passage:

If simplicity of living is a valid principle, there in one important precaution and condition of its application. I can explain it best by something that Mahatma Gandhi said to me. We were talking about simple living, and I said that it was easy for me to give up most things but that I had a greedy mind and wanted to keep my many books. He said, “Then don’t give them up. As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, you should keep it. If you were to give up in a mood of self-sacrifice or out of a stern sense of duty, you would continue to want it back, and that unsatisfied want would make trouble for you. Only give up a think when you want some other condition so much that the thing no longer has any attraction for you, or when it seems to interfere with that which is more greatly desired.” Richard Gregg, 1936

I stopped and realized how true this is in many aspects of my life. As I seek simplicity, I also find myself tied to materialistic comforts. My mother passed away a few years ago after a lengthy battle with breast cancer. My father remarried a year later. When he did so, he passed to me many of my mother’s items. Some items I kept due to sentimental reasons and other items I immediately found new homes for. The things I have kept have weighed heavily on me. I really don’t want all of them, yet I felt some sort of sentimental tie – as if I rid my home of them, I would be losing my last ties to her. Yes, my mother and I were extremely close and it pains to me to think about losing any portion of that relationship

After I read that passage above, I realized that these things were creating more burden and hardship in my life than they were in helping me remember her. They weigh on me and take space in my heart – and not the good memory space, but the challenging space of not knowing what to do. My memories of her are not in the items. The memories are in my heart and mind. The items are simply material goods which she had possessed. These things do not help my life. They cause pain. In this realization I learned that these items need to go. I determined that there are two of her things that I will keep – a piece of jewelry and her rocking chair. The chair that rocked me and now rocks my children.

Had I passed on these items a year ago, or even a month ago, I would have felt lost or that I had betrayed myself. I would have sought to replace them or been angry at myself (or spouse or children) because these items held importance in my mind. Now that I have found a place in my life and my heart that says that it is time to let them go, I am able to say good-bye to her items and it does not pain me to do so. I realize that letting these things go will aid in my journey toward a more peaceful and less complicated life.

Just as giving up the items that belonged to my mother, I believe that preparing for a low energy future takes that same type of evaluation. As we prepare, we need to evaluate our dependence upon and our desire for materialistic things. We may have to diminish our wants and feel anger or sorrow at our condition. Or we may realize what is occurring and mentally prepare to give up our current comforts. It is the space in our hearts and minds that allows us to want another condition enough to give up the former. I want to be able to give up my materialistic/greedy items in order to focus more fully on a low energy future.