Hold on Loose

Back 34 years or so ago, my college economics professor hypnotized my soon-to-be wife.  Professor Kenneth Asquith, blessed with a calm, even voice, was a skilled amateur hypnotist.  He was interested in hypnotism primarily as a means of determining whether or not each of us has lived multiple past lives.  So after Kim looked at the candle, listened to the Professor's cooing voice, and nodded out, Professor Asquith took her back through time.  He had her remember winning the Miss Rockford pageant and participating in the Miss Illinois pageant that followed.  He took her back to the age of three - "How old are you now?" he asked.  "Free," she responded, mispronouncing the word as she had in 1956.  He tried to take her back to her mother's womb and beyond, but stopped when she became uncomfortable in her memories.

Through it all I sat mesmerized.  "Take me, take me," I thought, "I'll do it!  I'll go all the way back!"  But when it was my time to go under, I couldn't.  I wanted so badly to be hypnotized that I was unable to drop into a hypnotic state.  Kim, on the other hand, who had been more or less indifferent to the whole process, had dropped right off.  (Admittedly, she was otherwise one of those people who could sleep soundly whatever was going on in her life, and I was not.)

I've thought of that incident often through the years.  It has served as "Exhibit A" in the past experiences I turn to when I get frustrated that something I love so much is lost or that something I want so much seems out of my reach.  Through the years I have clung to people only to lose (or damage) our relationships.  I have clung to "stuff" only to have it break or get lost or lose its allure.  I have clung to the idea of elusive ways of life (working in "the right job," living in "the right climate and culture," finding "the right path to enlightenment," and so on), blindly plodding through life with these ideals dangling in front of my nose like a carrot in front of a plow horse.

There are many things I want to do with the time I have left in my life.  In order to do them, I need goals, objectives, action plans, and so on.  I need to take action and measure results.  I need to expend effort.  A play doesn't write itself.  A speech doesn't magically appear in my computer's documents folder.  I don't go on stage to perform a great role without spending hours learning lines and rehearsing (although trying to do so is just what happens in one of my recurring nightmares).  I don't make the world a better place by just wishing it were so, even if "positive thinking" helps.

Ten years ago I attended a retreat called "Warrior Monk."  The retreat was designed, in part, to help participants be clear about their missions in life, to learn how to create goals and objectives in support of theirs missions, and (the hard part for me) to learn how to lessen their attachment to certain processes and results.  I thought, "What?  I'm supposed to spend all this time coming up with a mission, goals, and objectives, and not get attached to how I pursue them or what happens?"  The paradox was almost too much for me.  But then I got it.  I have always had a tendency to "hold on tight" in order to get what I want or to not lose what I have.  A better way might be to "hold on loose."  Do the planning, do the work, then let it go.  Repeat as necessary.

In his wonderful translation of the "Tao te Ching," Stephen Mitchell says it well in this excerpt from Chapter 10:

Giving birth and nourishing,

having without possessing,

acting with no expectations,

leading and not trying to control:

this is the supreme virtue.