“The greater story is unfolding before their eyes….and they are clinging to their smaller stories.” – Tina Howard
THE FILE CABINET I want is not in stock. It’s not available online either. But I’ve already given away my old one and the files from it lie everywhere.
I glance at the line-up on the bench, the many linear inches, and see that huge chunks are unfinished manuscripts and bits and pieces of once-important ideas I never started on, clippings that once struck me, the “someday I’ll write about” things.
Are they important to me now? Do I even know what’s there?
* * *
AN ARCHAEOLOGY intern, digging through these remains, might venture guesses about me and what presses in now. They’d get it wrong. No hint exists. Not here. There’s no room for now here.
Maybe a new file cabinet isn’t the answer.
“I can’t write the stuff I once did and I need to let it go,” I say and it seems like such an epiphany. But didn’t I say the exact same words to a friend in Texas last September?
She heard me. I was the one not listening.
* * *
EPIPHANIES happen in an instant, but the follow-through can be long in coming.
“The greater story is unfolding before their eyes….and they are clinging to their smaller stories.” I read. Yes indeed. My feet are all tangled up in the old stuff and I have no room for what’s before me now.
Scratch file cabinet from the list. Add shredder.
Time to make room for now.
* * *
See all the Letting Go posts here.
