What Are You Holding On To?
By Casey Douglass
A short while ago, I
listened to one of Alan Watts’ lectures. If you haven’t heard of
him, he was a British philosopher who did talks and lectures in
America during the 1950s, and brought many Eastern philosophical
ideas to the West in a way that the Western mind of the time could
understand.
In the lecture I
listened to, he spoke about how, from the moment we are born, we are
on a downward slope of flux, change and decay, culminating in our
death. But some of us cannot deal with this and we cling to things
that we think make us feel safer or more secure. He mentions the
analogy of someone falling from a great height but still holding on
to a rock as they fall. It conjures a comical image as to the
futility of the act and we might think the person doing it to be a
little bit mad. (The lecture name and where he was when he gave it
escapes me sadly).
It is now that we can
ask ourselves, what if the person is unaware that they are clutching
something needlessly? There are many things in life that we are
unaware of at any given time. If you are anything like me, you will
almost certainly have eaten something at some point and been shocked
when there was nothing left, yet having little memory of eating the
whole thing. If we can do this over something as simple as food, it
stands to reason that we might be doing the same thing when it comes
to our thoughts and emotions.
As an OCD sufferer, I
have always been aware that I am holding on to a great many things
that others wouldn’t think twice about discarding. If I took Alan’s
analogy further, I’m not just clutching one rock as I fall; I have
used string and ingenuity to pull others nearer to me, fixing them
together and have started building some kind of ramshackle house on
the plummeting platform!
The “rocks”
themselves are nearly all fear based, most featuring some worry of
loss, hardship or some fear about the future or regret about the
past. Awareness of this is sometimes enough to give you a little
sense of release or space, even if you still cling tightly to them in
every other way. As an example, I am almost certain that even if I
collapsed on the street and was rushed to hospital, once there, I
would still find my mind obsessing about whether I left a light
turned on or my laptop on charge. It sounds strange to hear that even
knowing something is worth letting go, that knowledge is sometimes
not enough to allow the “letting go”. I fall into this trap
regularly. If I find my life becoming more and more stressful, tiring
and just generally less enjoyable, I know that it is usually because
I am grasping too much.
One rock that I know I
did inadvertently let go is the one which symbolised my dreams and
fantasies. I just don’t seem to have them any more and when I think
about that, I don’t mind too much. They drew me away from the
present moment and gave me something fake and dazzling to compare my
life to, which usually ended in me feeling terrible when the
inevitable differences reared their heads. I don’t mind living in
the moment, and after all, if dreams and fantasies stop making you
happy or giving any sense of relief, they should be dropped just like
anything else.
I doubt I will ever be
able to let go of all the “rocks” that I have latched on to. I
would like to think that the occasional awareness of the futility of
the struggle might give me a measure of bravery, the desire to loosen
some of the binding ropes and the will to let some just drift away,
watching them mingle with the other falling debris around me.
Now it’s your turn.
Have a think. What rocks are you holding on to?
