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Beginner’s Mind…Again
Last week, I was excited to see my personal belongings being loaded on a truck and headed to NY, where they will set sail to meet me in my new home across the sea.
As the moving van pulled away, I was reminded of the first trip I took there in April. Leaving Rome and heading deeper into the countryside, I had a bit of a panic attack as I started to ascend the road leading to “the rock” upon which my hilltop city rests. Within minutes of arriving at the place where I was staying, it suddenly hit me that I had never been to this part of the country before, didn’t know a soul, and didn’t speak the language. But fear of the unknown quickly turned to excitement of the unknown as I reminded myself that I was going to have the opportunity to have beginner's mind again and to see so many new things that were waiting for me to discover.
The Luxury of Enough
I wrote my first blog, called “The Luxury of Enough,” way back in 2011. Back then, we were post-2008 housing crash, and the once “must have” McMansions had become our white elephants. Self-storage units and pod use exploded, and our homes, garages, basements, and attics were bursting at the seams with all the things we just had to have. Soon we realized that the accumulation was choking us out, and maintaining, insuring, servicing, and cleaning our “stuff” was sucking our valuable life energy.
The Goodbye
The 18th-century French poet and novelist Anatole France said “All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.” Those words rang so true as I spent the past few weeks saying a bittersweet goodbye to the place I have called home for the last 22 years.
Let Go To Let In
I was chatting with a friend the other day about all the new blessings in her life - a new home, a new romance, a new job and even a new geographical location. We were reminiscing about all the pain that came before and how she wouldn't have been able to manifest this bountiful and beautiful life if she kept clinging for dear life to the old one. I recently had a similar conversation with a client who said she felt “as if she was dying under the weight of all her old things”. She knew it was going to be an arduous task, but her courage and desire to purge decades worth of old clothing and furniture (and old, stale energy!) revealed a beautiful, clean slate underneath. Now, in the void created by removal and letting go, she is free of old impedances and can see new possibilities for making this her dream home once again.