With spring in the air, it’s again prime time for some housekeeping. I start getting itchy and twitchy to just purge, purge, PURGE! With a vengeance, I go thru closets, corners and cupboards searching out anything that no longer aligns to who I am now. Items that, in the soothing darkness of winter, were sentimentally cradled with affection just a few short months ago, are now inspected with cold, calculating eyes under the bright, harsh light of day. Onto the pile it goes. Goodwill Industries loves me this time ofyear.
All that physical purging feels good. It gets the blood going and clears the air, literally and figuratively. It gives us a sense of space, a sense of breath again. Especially for those of us that have been holding our breath throughout the dark night of winter, just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Spring gives us a chance to banish those fears, breathe deep, shake things up and look at things from new vantage points. If we’re really brave, we’ll take it a step further to re-evaluate our inner world, sweeping those outdated emotional and belief dust bunnies out the door, right along with their physical counterparts. If they no longer fit, no sense in having them hang around, holding us back from new experiences. At least, that's the plan.
Life seems too short to have anything or anyone in our life that makes us feel bad, anxious, stressed or obligated. There’s a difference between real connections in which you can open a vein, knowing your life blood is safe mingling with that of another in the far reaches of their soul and allowing both of you to emerge better, more whole versus participating in your own, or even worse, in someone else’s orchestration of an elaborate drama dance of action/reaction that keeps everyone perched just on the edge of insecurity. Who needs that? Pop psychologists may call it co-dependence, attachments or addiction, but it all boils down to the same thing: anything that does not honor the self and its inherent right to walk its own path, without sneers or judgment or anything that seeks to manipulate and win dwells in the land of ego. That's just crap - that’s not a real connection and it’s certainly not love. At best, it’s attachment that latches on, dragging us into negative places, at worst, an addiction. Neither contributes anything constructive to our new Spring forward model. Let’s toss it on the pile.
This includes the negative dance we choose to continue to do with our ego. You know, the one that likes to beat us up and point out, in excruciating detail, specifically how we are a screw-up, stressing us out, making us sad, and knocking down ourself-esteem? Some duct tape for the ego is in order. If it can’t say something nice, it needs to be muzzled. Let’s stop asking it to dance. Seems pretty straightforward. When did we forget howto be nice to ourselves?
Spring is a great time to let go of our unhealthy attachment to the ego’s need to stomp on our feet, along with our self-esteem. Let’s not give anyone that opportunity, including our darker selves. In Spring, we re-evaluate everything. Life is full of hope and promise as we resolve to shed winder’s maudlin doldrums with a refreshed, positive outlook of new beginnings – that means a harsh look at our own lives, shining the flashlight of truth on the dust of some serious emotional cobwebs under the couch of our minds.
Let’s let Spring shine, the way it was meant to, as a time of hope, of beginnings, of building, of possibilities. We can choose which thoughts and people we allow into our mental and physical landscape. Do they support something positive or do they tear us down? Do they seek to manipulate us into feeling bad to keep us under "control" or do they build us up and empower us? Do we choose to believe that life is full of possibilities or do we choose to believe that everything will end in disaster?
What will you choose to believe? What mental dust bunnies will you allow to remain under your couch, making you sneeze? What will you sweep out the door?
We’re all on our own journey. We get to decide the nature and the quality of the connections we make with others and with ourselves. Will they be based in honor, for ourselves and others, or will the ego win out in its insatiable need to control or will we step off the crazy-making carousel, boarding it up as permanently “Out of Order”? Can we give ourselves permission to just be happy and look to the future, seeking new possibilities and leaving behind the dust bunnies of anything that does not support that?
At this time of Spring time renewal, the odds are with us. With happy hearts, full of hope, let’s turn our backs on the limiting dust bunnies of the past and look forward, into the new possibilities. Let’s honor those real connections, for our sakes as much as theirs, bringing our most authentic selves to them. Sure it's scary as shit, but I promise you, it's worth it.
And if we’re really lucky (like I have been and for which I'm grateful on a daily basis), for a while, we get to walk along side of someone who happens to be heading in the same direction, to share in the sunshine.
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