Letting Go & Holding On

Letting Go & Holding On

letting go and holding on, originally uploaded by speckled_beckle.

All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.
~Henry Ellis

At some point, we all find ourselves stuck.
Stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Stuck between our friends and our family.
Stuck between wearing the yellow shirt, or the blue shirt.
Stuck on that really hard math question.

I am stuck.
My mom and I have been clashing for the last few months (ever since she lost her job) and it's starting to wear us down. (It's starting to wear me down.)
I love her dearly, but this house is not big enough for two grown women with their own opinions & worldviews.

I am stuck.
My loving boyfriend has been out of a job for about a month, and he's not putting much effort into finding another one.
Our collective future is on hold, our bills for this month will be in question, and, while he's spriting some new characters for a video game, he seems to be dragging his feet in finding a regular-joe, nine-to-five, "real world" job. (I should also mention that whenever I start to fill out an application or resume, he gets sad and says, "I hope you're not doing that because of me.")

I am stuck.
There is a situation that I no longer know how to handle. It seems that no matter what I do, I am always wrong, even when I can prove that I'm right or have done nothing wrong. (And I can even point out specific instances in which the finger-pointer should be looking in the mirror.)

...perhaps all this is happening because I am still holding on to my desire to please people. Insecurity comes easily to me, but it's mostly self-triggered. Maybe if I let go of all that nonsense, and just not care what people think of me or what I do, perhaps then I achieve peace.
...perhaps there's more to it than that. Perhaps I should mention that I have also been holding on to the dreams of getting married, owning a house, & starting a family; if I let go of those dreams, I wouldn't feel the scraping of my boyfriend's feet as he drags them along.
...perhaps, though, there's even more to it than that. Perhaps we should all realize that some things are shared among a wide group of people, and that we are only individuals in the way that we perceive and share the things in our world. Perhaps that's the answer. Perhaps if we let go of our competitive natures and instead be more accepting and realistic, then there would be a greater sense of peace in the world.

I know, I'm blabbering on about peace like I'm some kind of hippie or something.
But really, the harder decisions in life --the ones in which we find ourselves truly stuck-- cause unrest, and therefore a lack of peace.

I think it would do us all some good (I'm talking on a humanity-wide scale here) to choose what we are holding onto, and what we are letting go of, and why.
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