The balance between letting go, and holding on...

This morning, I trotted down the stairs to put in a load of laundry, innocently enough. Then after a little bit, I thought this llama could use a shower. So, I started up the shower, and no hot water was forthcoming from yon spigot.

Hmm. Something was awry. So I sent Stuart down to the basement to investigate, and he came running up the stairs in a flustered way as the washing machine hose had developed a bit of a geyser off of the right side, and was shooting water around the basement in a very wet way. There was a significant puddle across 80 percent of the basement floor. We shut off the main valve for the water to the house. We donned our boots and set about to making the floor less wet.

There were about 5 or 6 cardboard banker's boxes on the floor. Mostly we have plastic bins, but these were the old ones, that we never bothered to move to plastic.

I quickly carried these up to the kitchen and dumped their contents out on the floor. Baci dog in a sympathetic way, came and gently pressed his cheek against mine as I stared at the assortment of notebooks, articles, old magazines and greeting cards. Then he lay down next to my thigh, uncertain how to offer additional canine help.

Among the things in these boxes were true valuables, family photos, acceptance letters from Wellesley, MIT. My grandmother's handwriting on cards. The best recommendation letter ever written by J.C.R. Licklider for Stuart.

However, there was also real junk. Memos from Space Telescope to staff about the restriping of the parking lot, the bus schedule, picnics for astrophysicists with a desire to play baseball. Folders from the Human Resources department outlining benefits packages for jobs that I no longer have, and insurance companies that no longer exist. These were so easy to pitch out, that I practically laughed as I tossed them gleefully into the recycling bin.

Then there were two notebooks and several folders from a disastrous experience of graduate school at Johns Hopkins. These are full of problem sets that contain miserable little margin notes about how unhappy I was. The teaching assistant's notes I made for my undergraduate students. The letter from the department saying that my "prelim" scores were so low that they did not think I would be able to get a PhD, and they were cutting my funding. (This after they had said that the first set of prelim scores would not count!) And my reply letter, which I hope I never sent, even though they richly deserved it.

And so I face a choice. Do I keep any of that stuff?

Why should I keep it? One reason might be to wave it about once I truly become a whopping big success. Ha Ha - see how wrong you were! Okay, that might never happen. Or to show to someone else... see you too can overcome someone telling you that your dream is over. And you can find another dream, or reclaim your dream in a whole new direction.

Why should I give it the old heave ho?! Well, the past is done. There is nothing more to do about it. The people there who were friends have fallen out of touch, and the people there who were vile, are probably still vile, retired, or long since dead. (Here's hoping! *wicked grin*)

Is there some morsel of wisdom yet to be eeked out of this experience remaining?

Obviously, this set of paper still has some emotional kick to it. But is that enough to be worth holding on to it? Where is the balance between letting go and holding on?

Is it imperative to let paper become neutral (or wet) before getting rid of it? Or is it possible to let the very act of pitching it into the recycling, be the act that neutralizes it?

I'm willing to try it and see! Time to throw it out! :-)

By the way JHU - I have had WAY more fun in the meantime than you ever could imagine! Ha!

Copyright @ 2009, Catherine E. White, permission is granted for this article to be redistributed and shared with others in its entirety as long as links and attribution are maintained.
Catherine E. White is president of Llamagraphics, Inc., developer of Life Balance™ software for Mac OS X, Windows, Palm OS and iPhone. Life Balance provides a structure for your goals, projects and tasks that is priority driven, so you can to make better decisions about how to use your discretionary time. To learn more, please visit http://www.llamagraphics.com/