This post is also available as a podcast here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/s-p01/episodes/Life-e2ikcqm

Life happens. No matter what we do, or the choices we make, life will carry on. Life will move forward, regardless of whether we move with it. We may actively work to move things forward in the ways we seek, or stand by and watch as life progresses before us. I think all of us go through both of those phases. I’m in a phase, as I write this, where I am forced to watch on the sidelines in a section of my life. It’s hard for me. I’m a very active worker; always finding goals to reach in every aspect of my life. Much like any person who doesn’t know how to sit still when they’re put on bedrest, I have a hard time watching instead of engaging.

I think part of wisdom is in the learning to work when it is appropriate, and watch when it is not. I talked about letting go in the last post, and that goes hand-in-hand with this. The wisdom is in knowing when to let go. I may not be any good at letting go, but I do know when I need to let go. The problem isn’t in the wisdom, it’s in the application. I feel like I may be reinforcing something that is already taught, but I’m going to do it anyway. How do I know the difference? Introspection. I check with myself: is there any actionable thing that I can do that will help get me the result I want? If yes, then I do it, to the best of my ability. If no, then the work before me is in the letting go.

This post is about letting go of control in life situations. The last post I talked about objects and people, but this is about circumstances and life choices. I am someone always looking for something to do that will help me achieve goals, so that is the perspective of this post. In this post, I will focus on finding the times to let go, not on the times or ways to engage and work harder.

The biggest life situation where I had to let go was when I faced infertility. The Dr gave me things to do that could help me conceive, but there was nothing I could do that would make me conceive. All the stress and worry would only make my fertility issues worse. The entire process was an exercise in learning to watch and let go. I was lucky; I have a child. Many enter this process of unknowns and aren’t able to conceive. I conceived when I let go of expectations; when I let the process happen without trying to force it. It’s correlation, not causation, but when we cannot do anything more to arrive at the desired outcome the best thing we can do is let go and watch what happens.

See, I have a child, but I want another. In my first attempt to get pregnant, I managed to take a similar perspective to the one I had when I got pregnant with my first child. When that attempt didn’t work out, it was hard – but somehow a lot less hard than all the times I went in with my work ethic of trying to make it happen. The investment of forcing it through my thoughts and stress – it’s common for us to somewhat believe that our stress and energy towards an outcome will help make it happen, but it doesn’t – it costs more when the outcome doesn’t happen. The investment of work raises the expectations and the cost. Nothing I try to force is going to make me more likely to conceive again. Following the protocols outlined by my Dr will help, but the outcome isn’t guaranteed. When the outcome isn’t guaranteed, I have to sit on the sidelines and watch how it plays out. I have to let go of the added work, stress, and expectations. My hope in sharing this is that you can, too.

My story this week is about another situation where I had to let go

I was once the star of a web series. It’s hilarious to me now, because I almost forgot it existed. A group of us wrote, filmed, and published a web series on YouTube in 2011. Y’know, back in the days when web series were still new. I’m trained in theatre acting, but I have never been trained to do film, and that’s where this story gets funny.

One friend wrote the scripts, but got bogged down with work near the end – so I made final edits to the scripts. Apparently, all my years of theatre helped me edit the script, because the director liked the result. My roommate, and best friend, played the best character of the entire series. He added a lot of comedy to a show that was otherwise rather awkward. He’s one of my favorite humans.

My first husband was the director. He was also the final editor of the videos. He took on an immense amount of work to create that series, and he did a really good job at all of it. I’ve worked with a lot of directors in theatre, and he had a great ability to guide us and reach the vision we all had for the series. For a first-time director, I think he was amazing at it. Nobody’s perfect right out of the gates, and neither was our series, but I’m proud of our strange little creation.

I had to let go of a lot to do that series. I had to let go of my training. I had to listen to my director and adapt on the fly. There was one scene that we had to reshoot more times than I can count… because I couldn’t be subtle enough for film. As a stage actor, everything is exaggerated so that the whole audience can see it. On film, exaggerated movements are not helpful. I had to make a subtle nod to another character… we had to change the way we shot it just to accommodate my complete lack of subtlety. The whole experience was something unique in my life; something I would always do again.

Despite the fact that I am trained in acting, and I’ve done a lot on the stage, I am not proud of my acting skills in the series. I had to let go of my inner critic and learn to love how absolutely ridiculous we all were. I never had any expectation that the series would take off, but I also had to let go of its completion. My first husband put a ton of work into that series, but it is incomplete. If I share it with this audience someday, it ends abruptly. We had more, but we never finished posting it. Letting go of it was hard, but it’s beautiful in its existence, exactly as it is.

Whenever the outcome is unknown, and you’ve done all you can – the last thing you can do to help yourself is let go and watch it unfold.

I hope life brings you good things today. Love, -S.