Letting Go and Moving On

Spring showed up as usual here in Seattle around the beginning of March, as the crocuses began to poke through the final snowfalls of winter, and the Oak tree in this picture was still holding onto its brown leaves. As of about April 1, it was still hanging onto nearly all of them as the other trees along the street were beginning to bud. Today, April 9, those buds are turning to leaves and two major wind storms got this Oak to finally beginning to drop last year’s foliage after sleeping in, or so it would seem.

I walk my dog past this tree every day, and I wondered if it was OK – and then I started to think about what I’m holding on to that the season of the year, and perhaps the season of my life, would suggest I should let go to allow for the new growth that is coming.

We like to say that you can’t accept the new into your life until you release what no longer serves. But I think it is the growing energy of the new that gives what must be released the final push. I think it's the discomfort of growing bigger in a too small skin that signals the shedding for the snake, and perhaps the energy of the new leaves surging through this Oak is what’s finally disengaging those leaves. ANd those forces grow stronger the longer we wait.
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Waiting for the old to go will not bring the new. In fact, it will maintain the status quo until the undeniable energy of those new leaves forces the old ones to the ground. Doing our work to learn, grow, and serve what matters to us, despite our internal resistance, will give us the strength and will to release those things whose time has come to go. And staying in integrity, serving our purpose, is what sets us free.