Letting Go

As I am writing this I am in the process of a heart-pounding procedure, truly a jump from the precipice as it were.

With that introduction you might imagine all sorts of things — is it experimental brain surgery?  Extreme Snowboarding at very high altitudes?  Parachuting for the first time?  Nah … I’m wiping out my laptop and reinstalling the operating system.  Pretty radical, huh?

Well, it’s all relative.  When I think about what I do on a daily basis to earn my living, and the dependence I have on this machine, I would say that there is very little I could do to earn money if I did not have a completely functional system at my disposal every moment of every day.  So this last hour and the next four are pretty dicey.   I can feel your palpable excitement as you read these words.

To prepare for this event, I felt that I first needed to back up every byte of data that I use on the daily basis, which turned out to be lots and lots. I use an application named Syncback for that.  So I systematically backed everything using about a dozen profiles, which resulted in a backup set of about 250 GB.  That wasn’t enough, though. What if something went wrong and I needed, must have a system to work on immediately?  So I started the process of creating an “Image” of the system using Acronis, but when it started it said that it would take “about 4 hours.”  I don’t have four hours.  I haven’t had four hours to do anything in a given day for as long as I can remember.  So I had to let it go.

I’m proud of that — proud enough to write a post about it — I actually let go of a fear, and it felt good — a break with the past.  So what if I can’t get my machine back to the state it was four hours ago?  It’s a pretty sorry state indeed, anyway, which is why I’m doing this in the first place. After two years of banging on the thing it’s a complete mess, in terms of data and function, so Let it Go , already.  It’s like a new beginning.  How exciting.

Now I just need to do the same thing with the way I am living my life.  In terms of data and function, it’s a bit of a mess.  No point in taking an Image of my life at the moment — better for a clean break and start afresh.  Remember Krishnamurti?  If you do, then you know that he advocated this practice not every two years or so, but EVERY WAKING MOMENT OF EVERY DAY!

Which means that you don’t look at anyone with the same eyes that you did yesterday. You don’t let past conclusions about people and about the world affect what you are seeing this very moment. This is hard to do. Try it sometime.  If you are successful, the promise is Peace.