Letting go

My cousin N. was telling me about how she went to a “chalice circle” conversation with her father. The subject for conversation was letting go. That topic got me to asking myself some more specific questions: what are those things where I don’t have any choice but to let go? (a completed project at work, a car that is so rusted out it’s dangerous to drive, who I was in the past); what are those things that I’d like to let go but can’t bring myself to do it? (a book given to me by my grandmother, the bicycle that causes grinding sounds in my knees, a poorly-written journal I once kept); what are those thing that would give me great pleasure to get rid of? That last question was the one I wanted to ask myself today. So I got rid of several boxes of books that I haven’t looked at in years, some old shoes I can no longer wear, a three foot stack of old magazines I didn’t even know I had, several years’ worth of old appointment books. Let it go, let it go! I dusted the shelves these things used to sit on, and now I can breathe more easily.