Letting Go

 Bryant McGill once said, “Abundance is the process of letting go; that which is empty can receive.”

Letting go has constantly been a struggle for me, and sometimes, holding on to my errors and mistakes is what beats my energy and my mentality. So there’s letting go and there’s holding on. I believe a harmony of these two vital skills is necessary, as tenacity is often described as the key to success, and letting go is just as important when we know something isn’t going to change.

McGill shares an interesting idea, in which letting go opens up space for nouveau ideas to sprout. I have found this particularly difficult, as I’ve noticed a deep desire to delve into everything presented to me, whether it be taking a science test or making a card of appreciation for someone or anything in between.

I think I’ve come to understand that I can’t do everything in life, especially to my pinpointed degree of perfection. On Wednesday, a mother who was in charge of the Valentine’s Day Teacher Appreciation Lunch, shot Leadership Council an email, wondering whether we could hand out heart shaped cards to members of our homeroom so people could write letters of  appreciation. There was a catch…firstly, no teachers were to be notified or involved in the process, so it would be essentially all student led and was supposed to be secretive, and secondly, the Leadership Council would have to get the cards around to everyone as soon as possible since the mother needed them on Tuesday morning.

Leadership Council meetings are held every Thursday, and having a snow day yesterday, we were left without time to formally discuss protocol. On Thursday night, I felt the idea would not be executed as the group seemed to be on different pages about the project in general. I decided that organization needed to be done, so I called together the Council after Middle School Assembly, and I instructed council members to take initiative and hand out the cards to their homeroom during study hall. People from homerooms spent a few minutes writing letter of appreciation on the cards their Leadership Council representatives gave them during study hall and turned them into the designated box at the front office.

Yet one mistake occurred: since it was study hall and students are scattered throughout the entire school along with teachers, I would predict that almost all the teachers saw kids cluttered in groups writing on their bright pink and red heart shaped cards. I would assume that most of them guessed what was “surprise” was happening and to be honest, it’s pretty hard to keep anything a secret in middle school.

It was a mistake that I hadn’t thought of as I was planning out the strategy for getting the cards into student’s hands. But it was a mistake I had to let go of, since there was nothing I could do to change what was already seen. I had to let go of that degree of perfection I was aiming for in completing the task, and it wasn’t easy since I am one who likes to execute tasks to the best of my ability. I suppose my “empty” has received a lesson in organizing community tasks.