I love the idea of “seasons” of life. I don’t know who came up with it, but the first time I heard it I immediately knew what it meant in general, and what it meant to me, in particular. Having grown up a New England girl, I’m fond of seasons, and have an appreciation, sometimes a begrudging appreciation, for all of the different natural scenery and weather changes we get to experience here. When I heard this term applied to life I had a similar appreciation for the various experiences and friendships I’ve had throughout the changing seasons of my own life.
Recently my husband asked me to weigh in on a dilemma he was facing regarding a friend with whom he has a long past, but in recent years, he has struggled to figure out how this friend fits into his current life. He acknowledged this person as good and kind, but he has found himself having trouble prioritizing making time for him. He wondered what had changed.
I relayed to my husband that people like us, who really enjoy connecting with others and who form friendships easily tend to “collect” a lot of individuals that make up the quilt of our community. We have both lived in at least a dozen different places, have participated in sports at various times in our lives, including adulthood, have attended multiple schools for various continuing education, and have changed jobs at least 3 times throughout our respective careers. These circumstances lead to a lot of opportunities for connection and meeting new people, and we have prioritized intentionally staying in touch with those people whenever possible. But there are seasons to these friendships, and it would be impossible to keep the same level of engagement with such a large group of friends, particularly when we are (hopefully) all continually changing and growing.
Because my husband is more analytical and less emotional, I used a relatable analogy to describe for him what he is experiencing with his friend. I’m not great at coming up with analogies on the fly (I’m always so impressed with people who can do that), but I was pretty proud of this one. For additional context, he is a marketing professional:
“Imagine you have a product-based company with hundreds of ‘SKUs.’ It’s likely that a small percentage of those SKUs are contributing to the largest portion of your profit. But some of those older SKUs, including the first product that launched your company making it, and you, who you are today, aren’t really providing as much real-time value as they did during the part of the business where you were just getting things off the ground. There may be sentimental value to keeping those products in the line-up, and they may even still be contributing a little ‘boost’ in revenue once in a while, but if you have to make decisions about where to place the valuable investment of your time and other resources, you may need to drop some of them off the list.”
Similarly, people come into and out of our lives, some stay for a lifetime, others have a fleeting but impactful influence that imbeds itself into our souls and even though we rarely see or talk to those people, they are forever a part of us. For those who can accept the temporary nature of some relationships and who are cognizant of the importance of letting go and creating space when necessary for new connections to form, this can be as natural a process as the transition from winter to spring. But for those who cling tightly to the past, fearful that nothing in the present or future could ever be as good as it was before, the process of letting go can be as painful as a slow peel of the band-aid off a tender wound that has never been given the opportunity to breathe, and therefore to heal.
In the course of this conversation my husband was reminded of a quote he heard on one of his favorite sports podcasts (just goes to show you can learn something from a variety of unexpected sources). The podcast host had said “You should look at your past, but don’t stare at it.” That includes looking at the people that make up your past, and considering whether there is still a role for them in your present and/or future.
Here’s a relevant prompt to consider when determining how to evaluate past relationships and determine whether they should hold a place in one of the storage boxes of your mind’s attic, or if a spring cleaning is in order. Everyone with an iPhone or google photos or facebook account has experienced those apps bringing up your “memories from 10 years ago.” When you see that prompt come up, how does it make you feel? For me, there are certain time periods that I don’t want to revisit, so I don’t click the bait if it’s giving me a time period that I no longer want to revisit. On the other hand, sometimes those prompts show me a memory of someone who is still quite meaningful to me, even if I haven’t spoken with them in years. If it has been too long between calls/texts, it provides me with a reason to reach out to honor their role during a specific season in my life. A shared memory or a picture that brings the event and time period screaming to the front of my mind’s queue of thoughts, to-do lists, worries, etc. forces a pause, a look back at the past, and the associated positive emotions are rekindled in my body.
I think this is the reason people send Christmas cards. Some of the people I hear from at Christmas are past relations with whom I haven’t spoken or seen in years. Sometimes I get annoyed by this holiday tradition because I don’t like the rote act of sending a card without any sentiment that acknowledges my relationship to the sender, whether it was in the past or the present. But as I reflected on how we as humans handle the collection of people that we accumulate in our life’s journey, finding space for the new while trying to still hold on to the old in some small capacity, I realized that is exactly what this Christmas card practice is doing for the senders. The senders have a list, one that they keep adding to and, from what I can tell, rarely detract from, that captures all of the individuals who have been present at various seasons of their lives. “‘Tis the season, to honor ALL seasons!” People take time to pause, to reflect, and to show gratitude, albeit in the shortest, most efficient, and somewhat non-personalized way. It is an acknowledgement that those individuals who have touched their lives in some way are still present, tucked up in their mind’s attic, in the box with the tinsel and the ornaments. They shine the holiday twinkle lights on their existence for a few weeks each year, a reminder that it took many seasons to get to this one, and to honor the people who flowed in and out of those seasons, contributing to who we are today. When we take the card out of the mailbox, long before we open it to see the inevitable family photo on the inside, we can’t help but immediately have a different picture in our mind when we see the name on the outside of the envelope. We see the past. We see the person at the age and in the environment when and where we knew them. We see them for the role and meaning they played in our lives. The picture inside the envelope will show them as they are now, and many will not even show the person at all, but rather the new objects of their focus, their pride and joy, typically 4-legged or 2-legged family members. For me, the name on the outside of the envelope brings more joy and contentment than what is inside, for I can create my own picture, have a flashback of my past, smile, maybe tell a story about the person to my husband, or share with my mom that I got a card from a childhood friend and say “remember how we used to leave your kitchen a mess when we tried to bake chocolate chip cookies??” She remembers. And now I have spread a beautiful moment of past acknowledgment to her mind as well.
Maybe this Christmas card tradition isn’t as annoying as I thought it was.
The key is to relish the moment and the memory without becoming attached to it–look at the past, don’t stare it.
We hold memories and experiences in storage boxes in our mind, but there is only so much space there, and those boxes could be taking up valuable real estate that is needed for our continued expansion. There’s a literal and figurative hoarding that happens. We tend to hold onto things, memories and experiences, too tightly. They once held an important place in our lives, but it’s worth considering that they may no longer be contributing to our growth. The danger in hoarding past experiences is that we can’t carry them all with us and still have the lightness we need to expand into the best version of ourselves.
Last spring I was on a trip with a dear friend to a rustic and remote hot springs in western Colorado. While soaking in the warm mineral pools surrounded by snowy mountain peaks piercing a bluebird sky, a group of older women entered the pool. They were collectively celebrating their 72nd birthdays. During a conversation with the sort of “leader” of this matriarchal tribe we ended up talking about life and work and I told her I was taking an intentional resignation period to find work that is more aligned with my passions and values. I said “I know it’s a cliche, but life’s too short to keep doing something that doesn’t light my soul on fire.” She had many jobs throughout her life and admitted that her favorite job was not having one. Then she said “I’d like to challenge you on that idea of ‘life’s too short,’ and suggest a re-frame. Life’s not too short, it’s too LONG. It’s too long to carry extra stuff in your backpack that you don’t need with you.”
I really like this re-frame. This is why we need to let go of things and relationships that no longer serve us–to lighten our load for the present and future. Taking stock of what we’re holding onto, including relationships, is a practice we should employ regularly. One of the ways we can do that is to assess the literal and figurative storage boxes in our actual attics/garages or in our “mental attic.” You know the boxes I’m talking about, the ones that we move with us from house to house, keeping them tucked away because “one day” we might want to revisit what’s inside. Maybe they contain old letters or pictures or mix tapes (dating myself with this one, but hoping my audience smiled at that reference). Undoubtedly these boxes came from times and relationships and circumstances that served us when we were in a certain season of our life, sometimes 20, 30, 40 YEARS ago. Some of the ones in our mental attic may even have a label on them stating “DO NOT OPEN,” written in large font with a black sharpie marker. The organization gurus tell us that if we haven’t opened these boxes in a year, and definitely if we haven’t opened them since we moved and are about to move again, they should just be tossed out.
But we need closure. That’s why we never throw them out. We know we don’t need what’s in there. We know it was relevant at a certain point in our life and had some kind of impact that made us say, “well, let’s just keep this for now.” We thought it had such an impact on our lives that we needed to keep it safe and secure “just in case.” But there’s only so much room in our attic, or if you prefer, in our “backpack,” and life is too long to carry all this stuff with us.
We must ask ourselves why we are holding on to these things. Are we afraid to let them go because we haven’t healed pieces from those seasons? Or are we afraid that things will never be as good as they were “back then?”
The more important question is, what is the worst thing that could happen if we let it go… What if we start to peel back the packing tape a little bit and take a peek inside, a first step to decluttering.
If this sounds too scary, there is a way to do it on your own time, giving yourself permission to acknowledge the past with a healthy dose of detachment.
This approach can be used with the literal box in the attic or the figurative one in our mental attic.
Find a safe space, alone or, if you prefer, with someone you trust. Take a deep breath, close your eyes and take yourself back to the season where the contents of the box, the person, or the relationship appeared in your life. Open your eyes and then open the “box.” Pull each piece out one-by-one. Hold it, focus on it, remember, smile, appreciate what it brought to your life at that time, what you learned from that experience, even write about it. If helpful, practice the “appreciation, regrets and hopes” exercise we discussed in the last blog post on “letting go, gracefully.”
If you find something that really needs a ceremonial release, BURN IT! This can be really liberating (who doesn’t love playing with fire sometimes?) Create space for new memories, and acknowledge that those will also be temporary stops on your tour.
However long we have here, our backpacks should carry only the essentials. We don’t need to be weighed down by the past, whether the experiences were positive or negative. We can look at the past, but we don’t have to stare at it. The people and experiences who have helped shape us into who we are will always be just a memory away, but they don’t all need to be carried with us every minute of every day. Let’s anchor in the present while permitting ourselves to gaze towards the future once in a while as well. Enjoy the flow of the seasons and make space for the unique offerings each one brings.