Let Go / Don't Let Go

A friend was in great distress, describing in an email how she and her husband had just lost 80% of their retirement nest egg. By the second sentence, the tone of her email had shifted. She then described the process of letting go of the tsunami of fear that had washed over her. How she stayed focused on each emotion, asking: “What is the message here?”

rnI saw my friend at a party last night, with her husband. She came up behind me while I was dancing, and gave me a quick hug. As she and her husband moved in beside me to dance, I noticed that her husband was giving her a shoulder massage at the same time that they danced to the African beat of a band from Ghana.

Shake out that stress! Or as a poster Kevin wrote, in response to a Judith Warner article on Being and Mindfulness: “Let go/don’t let go. There’s an asteroid out there that could care less. Eat what you want, dance, zone, scream….”

One thing that those of us who are not caught up in the financial meltdown mess can do for our friends, and others, is to stay open and hopeful.