Letting Go

I am having the biggest exercise in letting go that ive ever had in my life. Learning to let go is something I think most of wish to master, but few of toil to accomplish. Living in a material world with a deadly grasp on possessions, who can blame us?

My flashdrive went missing, was lost, was taken. My flashdrive that holds 600+ photos of my entire peace corps experience. The first photo on there is of me and my mom at the airport, red faced and crying, as I am about to walk through security and board the plan to LA for Peace Corps Staging. That photo, September 16th 2008, marked the beginning. The last photo that was saved on that flashdrive were those taken on aneityum. Everything in between, the beginning and the end of this experience was saved on that drive and that drive only. I hadn’t backed them up yet. Now, they are all gone.

I left it in my usual computer at the office a few mornings ago and when I came back after lunch it was gone. I called every volunteer that was in the office that morning (only 6) and put up 3 notices around the office. Nothing… I tried.

My first reaction was…………… cry and freak out and curse the gods for not looking out for me (because yes, it felt like a personal attack: we forget our flashdrives in the Peace Corps Office computers all the time, and the person who finds it just puts it in your cubbie…but not this time). How can I not be upset??????? I mean, all of those photos, those memories. Yes, I have those memories in my mind: I can close my eyes and remember the way the island looked during rainy season, the way the mandarins painted the trees orange, the way the children’s skin glistened in the ocean water. I can remember events, days, moments. I can picture the smiles on people’s faces, the way the families gathered, who sat where and why. I can remember the people, their wrinkles, their worn-in eyes, their sun-kissed blotches, the jigsaw gaps in their smiles. But for how long? When will those memories fade? At what point will these fresh memories become stale, vivid becoming vague.. and what will I be left with? What will I use to trigger these memories? Pictures are pictures, theyre fun to look at and sentimental to us all, but these were more than pictures to me. These were full blown memories. And a special kind of memory. They have their own place in my mind and in my heart. Its devastating.

But this blog is not about devastation. Its about…learning to let go. It is what it is. Crying and complaining and accusing is not going to bring them back, it will only upset me more. They are just pictures, pictures of things I saw, things I did, people I met, people I lived with, people I loved. All of those pictures are memories inside of me. All of those people touched my life and our relationships are apart of me now. I am those memories. Those memories are me. I am thankful that ive kept such a full journal. The days and moments that were captured in those photos are held in that journal. That can be the spark I use to trigger some of these memories when the pictures in my mind begin to fade. Those pictures meant the world to me; I cannot tell you how much I valued them. How important they were to me now and how much more important they would have been to me in the future, in 1 year when I come home, in 5 years when this whole things feels like a dream, in 15 years when I tell the stories to my kids, in 50 years when I try and explain it to my grandkids. Those pictures were irreplaceable. Invaluable. Priceless.

But it is ok. In the end I don’t have a choice. This is a forced exercise in learning to let go. The only (non) choice I have is to let it devastate me and continue to dwell on it OR to let go. And that doesn’t really seem like a choice, it seems obvious that there is only one way to go, the way of letting go. Accepting that they are gone. Sure does hurt though. A lot.

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