Letting Go
Thoughts on leaving homes, people and possessions behind
Years ago I met the author of a book on feng shui. After a fruitless search in London for someone to share her life with, she emptied half her drawers and half the rail in herwardrobe and donated to charity stores whatever was surplus. By giving away what she had she was making room for someone to join her. Apartment ready, she flew off to Bali, and soon was back with the man she needed.
These past months James and I have been busy letting go. It has meant many trips to charity stores. For thirty years I had worked on moving to the United States – and pulled it off in December with the new Santa Monica apartment and new car. Then came California’s fires and Trump unleashed.
That apartment sale closed this week – when you clear out your wardrobes it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re making room to bring others back. Another life has moved into that address. Happily friends found need for its furnishings. We packed our most precious things and shipped them back to England with FedEx. They arrived as broken shards, everything smashed.
Start letting go and there’s generally more of it to do than you planned.
Back in England we have a seaside home, an apartment in a former Victorian hotel with bay windows giving 180 degree views over the North Sea. On returning I sat and looked out, checking my emotional attachment to the place, and realized I could let this go too.
There’s a shift in the UK to double property taxes on second homes, which prompted the move. It has now sold to a lady who his downsizing from her bungalow in the town. And so in the next month we’ll find new homes for all the furnishings and let her move in.
That seaside place was our haven during Covid. It will be sad not to have access to it. But not being there means we’ll be elsewhere. Somewhere we wouldn’t otherwise have been. Letting go of what you know means letting in the new.
I have a trick for letting go of what you have. If you saw it in a charity store, would you pay a pound for it? Often the answer is no. You were glad of it once, but you’ve had your time together.
Similarly with books. They accrue. Do you need more bookshelves or fewer books? I know we don’t need more shelves.
Once I spent an evening sitting on my kitchen floor, grieving the end of a relationship. I had fantasies of future moments together that were clear in detail, like memories of the future. One by one I brought them to mind and then let them go. That shared fish dinner on a table overlooking the Mediterranean? Puff. It vanished into nothing. I let go of a future that didn’t want to happen.
I’ve since told this to James, as we supped on fresh fish and sipped chilled white wine with Mediterranean waves crashing onto rocks beneath us. Letting things go: leaving room for the new to come in.
The first time I arrived in Australia, picking my single bag off the luggage carousel at Sydney airport, my immediate thought was, ‘This will do! Let’s stay here, start afresh, and leave everything else in our lives behind.’
Of course, that was fanciful. We were on a three-week trip, and you can’t walk away from financial and bureaucratic encumbrances.
Unless you die. I often reflect on the fact that I could so easily have died, yet haven’t. In that light, still being alive is a great gift. Everything could have been over. Instead I’m still here. In which case, do I want to just resume my old life, or try something fresh?
The photo for this piece is of a lady I saw on Lowestoft’s beach. She stood with her two bags in hand, staring out to sea, so totally still that for minutes I wondered whether she was an art installation. Then she moved a little way and stood motionless again.
I wish her, and everyone, somewhere safe to be.