It's all just metal and glass and plastic and paper and dirt.
Just let it all go.
Once, when I was in high school, I went to the drink machine installed in my dad's office to get some Delaware Punch.
In the process, I dropped a quarter which rolled underneath the machine. I went to some length or another (I believe a coat hanger) to try to retrieve it.
My father, seeing me up to some activity, inquired, and I told that I'd dropped a quarter.
Incredulously, he replied, "well, let it go!"
To understand the import of this to me, you have to understand that my father was the frugal one in the house. You have to understand that he is the reason why I thought it was so important to get it back (all the while viewing him as cheapskate...in that way parents make us in spite of them or ourselves). You have to understand that he said "let it go" in a way that indicated he would have been equally as incredulous to know that his was the influence that had me on my knees trying to fish out a thin, round slug of currency.
I've thought of that moment many times since. It was a striking instance.
Now, were this a lovely tale, you'd read that from that moment on, I learned to let things go that weren't that important.
It is, however, not.
I don't let things go very well.
Maybe I used to...well, I don't think I ever have. In fact I used to pride myself on my ability to keep hold to a grudge, the permanence of my memory.
But I don't now. Things fester, and crust, and fester.
I've hung on to so many things, for so long, that it is hard to get new things in. The only new information that seems to stick are experiences that probably need to be let go.
I broke something tonight that probably cost me few hundred dollars.
It happened. And it was annoying and disappointing.
But then I sighed and shrugged.
and thought about the story above.
and realized that I'd decided to just let it go.
(:-#Sr.
