Today I’m going to give away something small. For as I have mentioned in past entries, the point is not to clean house,but to practice letting go. And any object, whether minuscule or ginormous, can teach me that lesson. In fact, I may tend to hold onto small objects precisely because they are small and don’t occupy a large volume of space. So for that reason, I am digging deeper to find that small object. In this practice, nothing is insignificant.
Terms of endearment. I find our tendencies to develop personalized names for significant others is fascinating. Boo, baby, muffin, bear, I’ve heard people use so many. I do it. The people around me do it. Each person I’ve ever been with has a name derived from a unique history between us. I’ve given each person a different name, and have also been anointed with my own. When you think about it, it’s an intricate web of naming. The person I was with 15 years ago probably has more names from different people in addition to the name I gave. I have several names I have been given over the years by loved ones. We have many names, each of us.
In one relationship, I had many names for my partner. One of those names was “acorn”. I think that word arose because I thought about what a partner from a relationship long before that one used to call me, “squirrel”. I conjured up “acorn” to refer to how it had two pieces, the nut and the cap. And we were like a nut and a cap. It’s amusing to contemplate, isn’t it? Human beings are amusing.
It is such a tiny object. I picked it up on the sidewalk in Brooklyn one day because perfect acorns with their caps on are not as common as one would imagine. Squirrels usually have devoured the nut portion partially and when the acorns fall, their caps frequently fall off. It’s also amusing to me that I know all of this because of these terms of endearment. Once in a while I’d collect acorns and give them to my partner as small gifts (and just now I’m seeing how that made me an actual human squirrel). This small acorn that I found at the bottom of a container of office supplies today carries a history that is entrenched in a very personal way. I actually didn’t even realize I had any remaining. One small acorn. I wanted to let go of something small today with intentionality because I wanted to remind myself that we can create attachment to even the most insignificant seeming object.
Things, even those with no monetary value like this acorn, are just that, they are things. It is we who create histories and stories behind them. It is we who create attachment to these things. Thus, we are also the ones who can create non-attachment to these same objects. Each object has a personal history to someone. When we are aware of this and are able to see that it is not the object itself but our memories associated with it, that create attachment, then we can begin to let go of the objects. It is not the thing, but our attachment to the thing.
So on day 334 of my 365 Release I am smiling as I let go of the tiniest object to remind myself how we create our own histories, and how we can make an acorn into an Acorn and back into an acorn again. Humans are amusing indeed.
[I created the 365 Release Project to practice non-attachment, letting go and change by giving away 1 thing a day for 1 year. The background, vision and guidelines to the 365 RELEASE project are here. The running list of everything I have released is here.]
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