Participating again in the Five Minute Friday exercise, which I love. I encourage you to click on the link and write yourself. Sign up for the e-mail reminders and share your stories. It's just good for the soul.
This week's prompt/word is "release". For five minutes, I wrote with that single word guiding my word flow and here's how it turned out...
Release … To free and to let go. It’s a verb so to actually ‘release’ something or someone requires action. Release is something that is easier suggested than done.
How does one release control? How does one release a love? How does one release emotions or energy when we are so fixated on the notion that life has to be perfect and in order to achieve perfection, we should not let go of anything because by letting go or releasing, we relinquish control.
Ah, releasing doesn’t really require relinquishing. Releasing is more an understanding, in my mind, that some things aren’t meant to be control. Releasing is letting go and seeing what marvelous results unfold.
Envision this. Close your eyes – okay, don’t, because then you can’t see to read the vision…
It’s a summer evening. You are 7 or 8 years old. It’s hot. You’ve been running around with your friends during the day and enjoyed corn on the cob outside with your family for dinner. Maybe you’ve even eaten a watermelon slice and had the juice trickle down your chin earlier so that the stickiness lingers. Or, maybe you’ve just finished roasted marshmallows over a firepit or hibachi charcoal grill and that gooey goodness sticks to your fingertips. The scent of charcoal permeates through the air and you are lying on your back on a grassy hill. The stars are just slightly visible through a dusky, summer sky. You’re thinking about the grass stains on your knees and the adventures you will have tomorrow. Out of the corner of your eye, you spy a slight flicker. Then you see another. And another ahead of you. The air is still. Very warm and completely still. The crickets are starting to chirp. And then there’s another flash of light. It’s firefly season.
You jump up quickly, run inside and allow the screen door to bang. You grab the first jar you can find from the kitchen and rush outside and down the grassy hill to begin the collection. One, two, three…maybe one even escapes. Before you know it, there are at least seven or eight or even thirteen fireflies in your jar. But in your haste to catch the magic, you forgot to poke holes in the lid. Or maybe you weren’t allowed to poke holes in the jar and you remember your Mom or Dad telling you that without the holes the fireflies won’t live for another day. So, rather unwillingly, you twist open the lid and shoo the lightening bugs out the top and into the air, releasing them back to their home in nature. You watch them as they fly up, up and away into the warm night air and you cross your fingers behind your back as you stare in amazement and hope, with all your 8 year old heart, that the magic of a hot summer night filled with fireflies comes back again.
Had you not released the magic, another person would never enjoy it and the magic would never have had the opportunity to return. That is the beauty of release – you are oftentimes, letting go of something or someone to go on to something more magical, more beautiful, or bigger than where it began. Release isn’t relinquishing or giving up, it’s letting go for more.
Watch the magic unfold as you release into a new day!
The magic in my world today revolves around a young man (no longer a boy) who turned 13 at 3:16 a.m. this morning, and his two siblings - one older and one younger - and the little pup. We're soaking in the summer (because I am feeling well enough to enjoy it) and anxious for their Daddy to come home from work this evening. We may, possibly, be lucky enough to enjoy the family movie night that has been postponed a couple of timest his week. That means, popcorn and milkshakes and snuggles for sure!