I imagine the ultimate test in letting go is when you die.
If you progress into the afterlife or Heaven or stay put, cold in the grave (depending on your beliefs and spiritual affiliation), you get an A+ in letting go.
If you turn into a nice ghost, just hanging around moving chairs and creaking doors ’cause you have a few things left on Earth to clean up, you can probably bank on a C + with the chance to take the test over when some nice human with special powers comes along, notices you moving chairs and stuff, and helps you transition into the post living world. If you turn into a scary ghost or some demon that possesses toy clowns (like in Poltergeist), you clearly are still majorly stuck, and have official failed the “letting go” test.
But if there were a midterm exam on letting go, I’d say that test would look like your laptop click click clicking and never turning on again.
And when your computer died — because apparently that’s what the click click clicking always means — and it took your creative writing and your photos to the grave with it, the midterm exam demands of you proof you know your material. You need to prove to your friends and your family and your readership — and most of all to yourself — that you truly live this thing called ‘letting go.’
To pass the midterm, you need to breathe in deep, say a prayer that you did do a backup a month ago — and then publicly show some gratitude for that.
To pass the midterm, you need to be thankful that living your life on Facebook and Instagram means that part of your life exists somewhere else — in that mythical land called “the Cloud.” To pass the midterm means writing an essay that explains why a dead computer is like ten times better than a dead person and five times better than a solar flare powerful enough to wipe out the electrical grid, and take the Cloud with it. To pass the midterm is to acknowledge that you do not know everything and to actively remember the times in your life when opportunity has appeared in the middle of an assumed catastrophe.
To pass the midterm, is to type your blog post on your smart phone and be happy you have a smart phone on which to communicate and smart people whom may guide you on how to cope with the loss of things that feel really really important…but are in the end, just things.
