Let It Go
By Regina
Do you remember where you were when you realized COVID-19 had changed everything?
Honestly, I don’t. There are flashes of that second week of March in my memory: A look shared with one of my students’ parents, sitting back in my office chair after hearing of another gig lost, my boyfriend’s eyes wide as he asked: “What can’t you see?”
I own a dance studio. I also perform professionally, work in schools and often travel to teach. I work at large events, sometimes traveling for that, too: From small casinos to lavish weddings and celeb’s parties (or people who think they’re celebrities). I am...I WAS everywhere, all the time.
As I voluntarily closed the doors of the business I gave everything I had to open, as I fielded one text and email after another, cancelling my shows and events, I felt like I was watching water, glittering with reflected sunlight, escape my cupped palms.
I was gripped with fear. The kind of fear that has no words. No tears. Just a deep pulling at the bottom of your heart.
This is the moment I do remember. In my messy home office/studio, surrounded by unfinished crafts and snapshots of my dancers, I realized, somewhere deep inside me, that the only way through the fear was to let it go. To release my attachment to everything I knew (...and I began my dance journey 32 years ago; lots to disentangle), and move forward, not grabbing on to what I had built like a raft, but moving through and around, just like the water keeping the raft afloat.
It’s hard for me to write this. I don’t want you to construe “letting go” with “taking it easy.” Nothing about this has been simple or easy. I repeat: This has not been easy.
But I wanted to write this, because when I look around, I see the lesson from my moment of clarity being echoed in the fractal-like way our reality appears. We are, collectively, in the process of letting it go. It’s beautiful and terrifying: We’re letting go of an enormous societal construct we have built over a few millennia. We’re letting go of the ecosystem, as those of us over 30 remember it from childhood. We’re letting go of our reliance on the poor to fashion our lifestyles of convenience, and our tendency to accumulate meaningless objects.
At the root, we’re letting go of a system that protects very few at the expense of many. This system rewards us with all of our lovely creature comforts and distractions, and does it so nicely that we stop noticing it’s a system. Some of us don’t even see the bars of the prison we’re holding onto.
This letting go is a constant process. That wordless fear - sometimes it’s in my heart, sometimes my throat - comes back. When it’s in my jaw, I remind myself to unclench it. I start again. Finding this breath in the new space we’re currently in is a daily struggle. I want things to be different. I want what I had on March 12, 2020. I unclench my jaw again.
Across the country and the world - as our perspective shifts, there is anger and confusion. We resist change. We hold on, so desperately, to our own illusions of control. “The way things were” can seem sweeter in the filter of memory.
There are no platitudes that easily resolve the moment we are in together. You, reading this, have your own beautiful sky reflecting in the water you have in your hands. I may not know you, but I want you to know that if you let go, it will be ok. Letting go doesn’t mean not caring. In fact, it means you’re opening your heart to giving and receiving love in the most powerful way.
I know.
It’s hard.
Soften your jaw and unclench your teeth.
We don’t need 7.5 billion pairs of hands grasping. We need, like moving water in sunlight, to shine.