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Today's
quotation:
To let go means to give up
coercing, resisting, or struggling,
in exchange for something more powerful and
wholesome which
comes out of allowing things to be as they are without getting
caught up in your attraction to or rejection of them, in the
intrinsic
stickiness of wanting, of liking and disliking.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Wherever
You Go, There You Are
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Today's
Meditation:
Letting
go has become one of the most important elements of my
life over the past couple of decades, and something that I
truly wish someone had taught me about earlier. As
I've learned to let go of things like expectations and
disappointments and desires and judgments, life has become
a much friendlier and much more fulfilling
experience. Oddly enough, as I've learned to let go
of expectations of my students in the classroom, I've seen
that they respond by doing work on their terms, not trying
to fulfill my expectations, and their work generally
increases greatly in quality.
We learn to hold on to things. We may be afraid to
lose a relationship, even though ending a relationship may
be the best thing for us. We can fear losing a job,
though being forced to find a new job may make us happier
overall. We hold on to beliefs because they make us
feel comfortable with our view of reality as we see it,
though letting go of beliefs may help us to see reality as
it is.
When we do stop coercing and struggling, we find that our
lives are simpler because we're no longer trying to
control things in order to make them as we think they
should be. Should our daughter really have to act
the ways we think she should act, or should she find her
own ways to act with which she's more comfortable?
We need to let go of our need to control her, while still
being there to support her. This way she's happier,
and we're much more relaxed because we don't get
disappointed or frustrated when she does things her own
way rather than our way.
I want to be able to let go of my needs to make things be
what I think they should be. Of course, in my
classes my students need to learn certain things, and it's
my job to make sure that those things are presented to
them well. And I can't just give someone an A
because I've let go of my need to have control--they still
must earn that grade. And if students aren't
learning, I want to change what I'm doing to help them
learn. But I can let go of my need or desire to
control how they do what they do--which I can't control anyway--and
allow myself to relax and relate to them in much more
personal and effective ways.
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