LETTING GO

(Thank you, Mary, for suggesting that I write about this incident on my blog.)

Recently I read that “Every person in this life has something to teach me” (Catherine Doucette). I might add that, if I’m attentive, every situation also has a lesson to impart.

It’s been a crazy summer. Certainly the weather has been cooler than usual, and time seems to have grown wings, the way it flies by. But this summer has gone by especially fast because we’ve spent a good deal of it repairing the water damage we sustained in our Tahoe home, negotiating with our insurance company for reimbursement, and working on a project to beautify our front yard in Sonoma.

With all that going on, at times I’ve lost my focus and balance. By way of example, recently we returned from Tahoe to find the new exposed aggregate paths in our yard did not turn out the way we wanted. The aggregate looked pale and washed out, and there didn’t seem to be anything we could do about that. The deed was done, the concrete poured, and even our wonderful contractor was disappointed in how it had turned out.

The main reason we undertook this project in the first place was because we had hired a cement contractor several years ago to jackhammer our paths and pour new concrete. His work was unsatisfactory: the cement turned blotchy with dark stains, and the contractor made no attempt to fix it.

Now it looked as though we’d spent a small fortune to redo the paths and add decorative touches, and once again it was turning out poorly. It took me a while to admit my disappointment to myself, and then to speak it out loud to Tom. As it turns out he also was disappointed, but there seemed nothing we could do.

On reflection I realized that I had a choice: I could either wallow in disappointment (and let that affect my life in the next few days and weeks), or I could accept the situation and move on. Of course it’s much easier to decide to let go of something, than it is to do the actual “letting go”!

In the past weeks I had only been able to exercise and meditate fitfully, because of all the work going on in our front yard. Now with the realization that our yard wasn’t turning out as well as we had dreamed, planned and paid for, I saw anew the importance of maintaining my exercise and meditation practice. In order to stay balanced emotionally, I need the endorphins from working out, and the peacefulness that derives from regular meditation.

It wouldn’t be possible to overstate the place of prayer in my life. I brought my disappointment to my prayer time, and sought the peace that letting go of the situation would bring. For several days I focused on letting go of my expectations for our yard, and my disappointment that we were unable to meet those expectations. No matter how much money we put into the project, or that we hired a fabulous designer and found an excellent contractor, we couldn’t bring about the result we sought.

How little we can control in our lives! We are born into a family, a financial situation, a religion and a country that we don’t choose, and are given bodies that may or may not be healthy. We make decisions throughout our lives that have their basis in events we have little control over. Certainly we do not control the way we die, or the time of our death.

At some point in my ruminations and through a lot of prayer, the grace of letting go did come, and I truly, honestly, let go of the results of our front yard project. What’s very interesting is that once I was able to do that, our contractor tried various techniques to bring the new concrete closer to what we were looking for, and the paths did in fact look better to us.

Shortly after, I was en route to lunch with a friend in another town. As I was driving slowly along a country road, I came around a bend and discovered a flock of wild turkeys on the road in front of me. Most of them had already crossed, but the stragglers turned around and began retreating to safety. As I waited, their leader looked at me and began to waddle back across the road. He stopped in front of my car, looked at me again and flapped his wings, and then trotted all the way across. One by one, each turkey ventured out. Looking me in the eye, each would flap his wings as if to say “Thank you!”, and then would cross to the other side! I laughed out loud as each turkey stopped and flapped his wings at me! It felt like a salute from the Divine, affirming me in the letting go of what had been weighing me down, our dashed expectations over our front yard. Of course I believe the Divine has a wonderful sense of humor! Why not use a flock of wild turkeys to say, “Well done!”