10.2.2013 Phoenix, AZ
The last few weeks feel like one long exhale of letting go. In order to even begin this trip, I had to let go of places and things that I had attachments to. As this trip has evolved and continued, I feel that each stop on the road has been an experience of falling in love and immediately having to end the relationship. Each place that I have been has been enchanting…I have been lucky enough to have visited some spectacular places in the last weeks, each outrageously beautiful in its own way.
In each of these places I have experienced a depth of hospitality I do not know if I ever have felt, or perhaps allowed myself to feel…I have made new friends; gotten to know, on a deeper level, people I loved already through meeting their loved ones; met fascinating, hilarious, strangers; had life-changing discussions; sang, ate, drank, danced, hiked, laughed, and romantically star-gazed in just a few short weeks.
And I had to express my gratitude and then drive away from each of these phenomenal moments.
And it was amazing.
There has not been one place or person that I have visited or met on this trip that I have not wanted to spend more time with, and yet the very vehicle that brought me to each one of these encounters is also the one that pulled me away from them. Which, I suppose is the bittersweet magic of life…that the very nature of our existence, the absolute miracle of it, is that each moment is passing and each life will end.
All of this exercise in loving and letting go has made me look at my own attachments in a very different way because, of course, my own life has not stopped despite the fact that I am in a point of transition and, even as I breathe through all of these new day-to-day let-goes, there are still things in my life that feel like giant painful wrenchings when I try to let go of them. The lesson though that keeps echoing in my head, however, is how to stop focusing on the pain of letting go of something or someone…to stop thinking about how much it will hurt to 'lose' or walk away from what I love…and think about how much new joy I will allow into my life when I am no longer holding on to what isn't working or what cannot remain. With each place that I have left, despite the tender parting, a new place has been on the horizon with lessons, love, and life unfolding anew.