Act or Re-act?

I have been working to give the past legs so it can walk away. All those old letters I’ve started ripping up and throwing away, the old blog posts and photos I’ve been cataloging and saving or just deleting, the old emails (sent and received; thousands of them) that no longer reside in folders listed in the sidebar of my email homepage: all of that is part of the process for me.

But yesterday morning, I imagined a different way of moving the past along. While I’ve wrestled with questions about letting go of the past or (maybe more accurately) getting it to let go of me, I’d not considered the situation in these terms: when I drag my trauma responses into a conversation, aren’t I bringing the past along with me? What would happen, then, if I tried to meet the moment in the freshest way I’m capable of?

Going into an encounter having recalled how much someone has hurt me in the past or remembering how a certain situation tends to make me feel might be like going to a wedding in a suit of armor. How would I be able to hug anyone? How would I be able to dance? Would lifting the visor let me eat or drink? With no room for spontaneity, wouldn’t I have already mostly decided the outcome of any encounter with the bride, groom, and other guests?

***

And because life is beautiful, when I finished writing those thoughts in a notebook, I picked up Rilke’s Book of Hours and read this:

If I had grown in some generous place—
if my hours had opened in ease—
I would make you a lavish banquet.
My hands wouldn’t clutch at you like this,
so needy and tight.

Then I’d have dared to squander you,
you Limitless Now.
I’d have tossed you into the ringing air
like a ball that someone leaps for and catches
with hands outstretched.

I would have painted you: not on the wall
but in one broad sweep across heaven.
I’d have portrayed you brashly:

as mountain, as fire, as a wind
howling from the desert’s vastness.