When I was a freshman in college, the cheery lemon cream cement block walls of my dorm room were covered with posters resplendent with inspirational sayings.  My favorite was the one with the butterfly motif that said “If you love something, let it go.  If it comes back, it was meant to be.”  It had that touch of heartbreak and melodrama with a smidgen of optimism that resonated with my 18 year old view of life.  Ah, to be a martyr for love – a truly noble calling!

 While I did become the Joan of Arc for the lovelorn for a time, letting go with practiced painful panache, I didn’t seem to ever get that second part of the saying – the coming back part.  In my mind, the coming back was a guy realizing he had made the biggest mistake of his life, returning with flowers and begging for forgiveness, at which point I would immediately declare all was forgiven and we would ride off into the sunset together.  Surprisingly it just never happened.  I came to write off that adage as a pithy attempt at, well, selling posters to 18 year old girls.  But what I never understood about it before was that it wasn’t about the eternal hoping to get the prize – it was about the letting go of the attachment to it.  Now, just a couple of years later, I’m beginning to get the message. 

There have been many things in my life in the last few years I’ve had to learn to release:   some literally, some emotionally, some mentally.  In a lot of cases I harbored a secret wish that they would come back to me.  But the amazing thing that I have come to realize is that when I release not only the situation, but more importantly, my attachment to the outcome, things have a way of working out.  How many times have I plotted and planned how something should work out, only to be disappointed?  And conversely, how many times have I had an incredible time when I was able to “go with the flow”?  It is not that I should give up the “prep work” – it’s the expectation of the result that needs the release. 

In starting my business there has been a lot of prep work that needed to be done.  I’d never done anything like this before and had a vision, but not necessarily an expectation of how it would all come together.  I was truly in the flow of things and I was swept along in an amazing fashion with doors opening left and right.  It was such an example to me of doing the next right thing, letting go, and seeing what the process placed next in my path.  I was living and loving the process, without the preconceived notion of how it should or would be.  

So you’d think I learned my lesson.   

I have come to believe that life affords you ALL sorts of opportunities to try out your new skills.  The next time I faced a challenge, instead of doing what I had JUST done – taking the next step and trusting the process – I somehow decided I now KNEW how this was supposed to work.  I think by now you know how that turned out.   

So after realizing once again that perhaps that way doesn’t work, I’ve come up with a new mantra:  How can I serve?  At least for today I’ve realized that what I do is not about me.  I am the messenger, the conduit, the enabler of something beyond me.  I have unique skills and talents that allow me to bring things to fruition for which I am grateful.  I’ve come to realize that serving means utilizing whatever skills I have, regardless of any judgment I may have put on them in the past.  I use to think that serving meant a huge commitment but now see it could be as simple as making a sales clerk smile.  I just never know how something I do, no matter how insignificant it may seem to me, could affect someone’s life.   

I’m still an optimist and still the person that wants to makes things happen.  Those are part of my gifts.  Martyrdom?  Been there, done that.  Today that saying on my college poster speaks to me not of martyrdom but of freedom.  I’m letting go of rigid expectations that took up so much energy and space in my life in the past.  And who know what I just might get in return.  I’m looking forward to it…without expectation!    

…then come meet your newest acquaintances.

As of February we are carrying a new line of jewelry. A friend to the center, Nesli Cakiroglu, has brought to us a unique jewelry line from Ana Products™. All pieces are imported from the Mediterranean coastal nation of Turkey and reflects their national artistry which is influenced by both Eastern and Western influences. The results if which are much like our members varying in design, inspiration and flare. We welcome you to come by and see for yourself!