Keeping a Letting Go Attitude, by Q. Reyes – Artistic Warfare #59

February 15, 2010 Q. Reyes 1 Comment

Yeah, “keeping a letting go attitude” is an oxymoron, but not really.  I watched that movie “Up In The Air” with George Clooney the other day and it helped me put things into a new perspective.  The most memorable quote of the movie was when the main character, Ryan Bingham (Clooney), is giving a speech and he summarizes life (in his own way) using a backpack metaphor:

Ryan Bingham: “How much does your life weigh? Imagine for a second that you’re carrying a backpack. I want you to pack it with all the stuff that you have in your life… you start with the little things. The shelves, the drawers, the knickknacks, then you start adding larger stuff. Clothes, tabletop appliances, lamps, your TV… the backpack should be getting pretty heavy now. You go bigger. Your couch, your car, your home… I want you to stuff it all into that backpack. Now I want you to fill it with people. Start with casual acquaintances, friends of friends, folks around the office… and then you move into the people you trust with your most intimate secrets. Your brothers, your sisters, your children, your parents and finally your husband, your wife, your boyfriend, your girlfriend. You get them into that backpack, feel the weight of that bag. Make no mistake your relationships are the heaviest components in your life. All those negotiations and arguments and secrets, the compromises. The slower we move the faster we die. Make no mistake, moving is living. Some animals were meant to carry each other to live symbiotically over a lifetime. Star crossed lovers, monogamous swans. We are not swans. We are sharks.”

In my opinion that is one of the best-written monologues out there.  It’s deep and it gets deeper. I could relate to all of it so easily.  I feel that it gave me a better instant understanding of the human condition – at least my own personal condition.

I’m always trying to move away from being a pack rat.  Not only am I constantly keeping material things I don’t need, but I save a lot of emotional baggage I don’t need, as well.  In a way we’re all pack rats.  We save everything we can in our memory for later use.  A lot of times we never need to use any of it again.

So when I say it’s important to “keep a letting go attitude,” what I really mean by that is that we shouldn’t save things for later.  There might not be a later, and if there is a later, who’s not to say that you’ll have something better for that moment?

If you haven’t seen Up In The Air, I suggest you watch it, right after you watch Avatar in 3D – which it’s a great movie, too.  Now stop being a pack rat with your life, and let go of all that baggage.  I know I’m trying to do the same.