The Art of Letting Go

I keep a tight rein on my thoughts and feelings about 99 percent of the time. It reflects in my writing, even on my blog. I seldom  just "let it go" and write, but when I do the results are often surprising.

Deb over at Greener Pastures let loose a whopping blog entry that was ostensibly about another blogger, Ginger over at landuvmilknhoney but was more about how alienated she feels as a northerner in the south, and as a progressive living in the south amidst a bunch of right-wing bible thumpers.

Oh how I envy that entry, and Deb's ability to say what she wants to say without worrying about who she might offend. Because she believes her opinion is as valid as their criticism. And I find that remarkable, for I sit here in my timidity with my butt planted on a very solid line between absolutely nothing. I am fence sitter extraordinaire even though I know which side I think is the more appropriate one.

Not that I don't have opinions, because I do. I just don't share them often. Regular readers know that I am not a member of the conservative party, or the tea party, or the libertarian party. Nor do I always countenance what the progressive party sanctions, mostly because these days it is rather hard to tell the difference between parties. They're all out for profit, for big business, for control and military, and they have very little to say about regular people, the little person who sits behind a computer and plugs away trying to make a living. They care nothing for the living cogs behind the machinery, just the machines.

I feel alienated from any political party because none of them represent me. Maybe we need a Creatives Party, one that represents people who believe in the creative process, who believe in the greater good of society. A party that believes people everywhere have basic needs that government can and should meet, one that doesn't allow people to become homeless because their spouse had a heart attack and can't pay the medical bills. A more benevolent society that sees people as human beings and not as paychecks.

Ginger was a homeschooling, homesteading mom who lived about eight miles from me. She and her family were making a go on 20 acres of land - just 20 acres! and were doing well until her husband unexpectedly passed away. She stayed for a year - a year longer than I thought she would, to be sure - and then she moved to Texas to join her parents. She left the farm unsold and packed up and went. Deb admired that, and I admire that, too. I admire Ginger's ability to take care of herself and her family, to do what is necessary without fear of what others might think, without worrying about the financial end of it because she is sure God will take care of it all, in the end.

Deb wants to go back home to New Jersey, but she is staying until her place sells. She laments her inability to simply move back home like Ginger did.  She is bound here financially and she feels those bonds keenly, and aches to be free of them.

We all have our bonds, I think. We are tied up in our lives, wrapped so tightly that we can never be free. I am bound here. My family goes back generations, two hundred years of blood, sweat and tears building and creating and moving and making things more, or sometimes less, than what was here when they came. I have a farmer husband with those same ties, a fellow who would no more think of moving away than he would of tearing out his right eye.

So many days I feel simply alien in my own skin, but who wants to read that? Besides, this is a blog, not a diary, and that kind thing doesn't belong here. Not day after day, anyway. Maybe just this once, or once in a while.

But the letting go? The being free and easy with the words, the laying down of ideas and the tossing around concepts and communicating with an effortless, uncontrolled touch of a finger to the keyboard, that does belong here. Saying what I really think, without wondering if someone will sue me, accuse me, or abuse me, that does belong here, and I'd like to see it here, somehow.

I'd like to be so out of control that I know my opinion counts, and is worth something, and that its value lies in putting it out there, and so what if somebody disagrees. I sit on the pot same as they do, and so what if their pot is guilded while mine is porcelain? They do the same job.

Letting go. Being free and easy, tossing off the ropes that bind. Why O Why is it so damned hard?

**This entry has been edited.**