Let it go

In the past couple of years, I have needed to wear glasses more often when I read. And despite my best attempts to ignore this fact, I must now admit I cannot see even text messages on my phone without glasses.

I have two pairs, one I keep in my office and a pair that have lived happily for the last two years on my bedside table, which I use on the few occasions I read in bed.

A couple of weeks ago, the upstairs pair vanished. Although I have the other pair, this loss had me searching every nook and cranny in the house. Suddenly, these glasses I rarely used became an essential item I could not live without.

For almost two weeks, I would do another search each day, and the outcome was still the same. No second pair of glasses were to be found. The more I looked, the more unsettled and frustrated I became.

I was angry with myself for losing them, for not taking proper care of them, and deep down, just some sadness because I loved those glasses.

Monday this week, during another fruitless search that involved me looking in the fridge FFS, I decided it was causing me too much stress, and it was time to stop looking anymore. It was time to let them go.

I resigned myself to the fact that they had gone forever, and I decided to move on and remove my attachment to them. With this decision, my stress went, and a real sense of peace replaced it.

Then yesterday, while sitting in my car, I reached over to put something on the back seat, and what did I find there? Yes, you guessed correctly, my lost glasses!

As I write this, they are back at the side of my bed. And although I am happy to have them back, I also know I can live without them if they ever do another vanishing act.

The moral of this blog is a simple one:-

Losses can bring up unpleasant feelings. We lose things, and these losses can have us desperately trying to find them again. But those feelings won’t go away with endless searches. They will only go away with our decision to let go of our attachment to whatever we have lost.

And as a wise person once said, If you lose something you were meant to have, it will turn up again at some point.

I was clearly meant to have my glasses.

One final learning I got from this experience is never to spend two weeks of your life looking for something you can replace for 30 quid at Vision Express.

Take Care

GB

Originally published at https://garethboot.com on March 15, 2023.