I mentioned to a friend last night that I wanted to write a post about the sh** in my purse.   Why?  Because yesterday I found a fork, a napkin, an empty baggie, underwear (don’t ask), 10 pony holders and a flash drive in my purse.  This is not normally an issue for me, because as some of you know, I’m a minimalist.  But in thinking of all this “stuff,” I realized that it represented a bigger flaw of mine – the inability to let go.  This, my friends with college-bound students, is killing me!

Eckhart Tolle believes we hold onto things because they give us a sense of identity. Perhaps this explains why we often hold onto our pain/bad relationships/habits far beyond their ability to serve us.

Of course, its human nature to become attached to things or people.  But, sometimes we go overboard.  According to the Buddha, our natural addictive behavior is the root of all suffering.  Could this be true?

There’s a reason why we don’t let go so easily:  It’s because we believe that our “things” (whether people, habits or objects) will make us feel better, complete, happy.  This, we know, is not really true.

Lately, I’ve been taking a good hard look in the mirror and asking myself, what am I so afraid of?  Why do we keep our bad habits when we know they are bad?  I think it’s an inability to realize that what we think the habit brings to us (comfort, completeness, love) is already inside of us — In reality happiness, comfort, joy comes from inside and we bring it out to our relationships and the world.

It takes strength to deal with fear emotions and our addictions to things and people.  It requires that at that moment, when we want that huge bowl of ice cream or we want to run after that person who really isn’t the right fit, we must stop and notice that our sense of craving can be released with every breath out of our body.  And, with every breath in, we can bring in love for ourselves and understand that the very thing that we (wrongly) expected from the thing/person, is already inside us!

So, the fork and the underwear in my purse?  I’m not sure what subliminal message I’m sending myself there.  But the truth is, there’s no reason to carry every last thing with me.  I’m fine with less as long as what I do have, I bring out to the world and let go of the rest.

I once read that the road to happiness must be uncluttered or else it’s a road to somewhere else.

Time to start cleaning house my friends. 🙂

Have a great weekend!