Let Go

Maya: I don’t know if I’ll ever find be able to do it all well and find the balance.

Principal: The things you love to do take so much of time. Your blogging, your planning, your technology…

Maya: Yeah, but those are the things that I love to do, the things that fuel my passion.

This is not the first time he and I have had this conversation, the conversation about me going and going and going without shutting down, without balancing school and work. The truth is I blame it on him sometimes: his high expectations, his ever-increasing bars, the standard he sets of being the best/being excellent all the time, his challenging me to keep climbing his proverbial mountain. And yes, I know I’ll never reach the peak, so I do sometimes wonder why I’m not just happy to stop and rest along the way.   Perhaps on some level this is about my will to be the best as well as his push for me to be the best challenging me to face setbacks with the attitude  of, “BRING IT ON!”

At the same time, I think my self-created distractions get in the way of my climb. I think of what takes my time, what wastes my time, what could be pruned, and what needs to be kept. I love blogging daily for the month of March. I love the way I see things differently, more deeply, more introspectively. I love the way it gives my thoughts somewhere to live. At the same time, at the end of the month, I’m always glad to let go of that commitment.

How can I be a person who lets go of something every day instead of a person who keeps trying to acquire? Where is the balance of those two things? On some level, I think I have to discern what I need to acquire while at the same time discerning what I can let go of.  I think that if I am truly to find the complete and balanced person I seek to become this will be where the wisdom is found.

Words of wisdom do come from unlikely sources–my principal who pushes my buttons–he inherently gets shutting down, turning off the phone, taking time to get away from things. He gets letting go.

In his mind, there is little ambiguity; instead there is compartmentalization, prioritization, strategy, and deliberateness all developing seamlessly in his mind and working out naturally in his actions. His tasks are written and checked off as completed and deleted and pruned or set aside for a bit as deemed unnecessary because of shifting priorities.

Pursuit of knowledge. Questioning. Seeking to grow. Seeking to know. Fueling my passion. Finding the balance. I’m not sure where my answer lies; I’m not sure what to prune in order to gain room for balance and perhaps even wisdom (I mean I’m getting closer to 50–wisdom should come soon, shouldn’t it?).  I just know that some things need to go, yet how do I know what needs to go that won’t affect how I grow?

Perhaps an all or nothing approach isn’t the answer–perhaps the answer is in my OLW, my OneWord, deliberate. Deliberate wisdom. Deliberate balance. Deliberate living. Perhaps I don’t need to seek an answer or force an answer; perhaps I just need to let go.