Have you ever had that feeling? The one in the depths of your gut, the one that you get when you're nervous, or anxious, or scared, or...well anything you feel when you're not sure of the outcome of a situation. Its freggin annoying isn't it? I know theres a certain beauty to it, how we as human beings are capable of feeling such a wide variety and shades of emotions, but in all honesty, there are times when I would damn sure as hell be happier without this particular capability.
I, personally, can be a bit of a worrier. What that means is I tend to feel this..."beautiful" feeling more often than most people (I would assume). So now, in an attempt to thwart this annoyance, I am proposing a new strategy: let go and forget about it. One really has to be careful with this strategy though. Time and effort needs to put into defining what aspects of life this letting go & forgetting about it strategy applies to. After all, it is a very slippery slope. One minute you don't care that in your bookshelf your books don't perfectly line up, the next minute you're watching your house burn down because halfway through attempting to cook to impress your date, you wanted to let go of the nervous feeling and decided the best way to do so was to just forget about it, leaving the stove, the oven, the microwave, and whatever the hell else your learning to cook idea incorporated, to bring the house down...literally.
Alright, that was a bit of an exaggeration. Ok fine, it was a lot of exaggeration, almost comical in fact. But you get the idea. What I actually propose is letting go of things that aren't worth holding on to. Of course, this varies from person to person, depending on their own unique idea of what exactly is worth holding on to.
I'll give an example, a personal one from a couple of years back, when I was in my first year of university. My now ex-girlfriend and I stopped being in a "proper" relationship month or so before the beginning of school because we were going to different universities, and hers was quite far away from mine. She was my first girlfriend, and also my best friend at the time. When I say we stopped being in a "proper" relationship, I mean we were somewhere in between friends with benefits and boyfriend/girlfriend. Throughout the whole year, we barely talked (with the exception of when she needed something). To her, we may have been "best friends" in name, but in reality, I was more something to be used when needed.
That being said, throughout the whole year, I had such expectations. I'd always hope she'd come on Skype or Gtalk or something, just to talk at least once a week. This would seem odd but if you take in to consideration that we used to talk every day in high school, it makes a little sense. In retrospect, I should have just let go of said hopes and expectations after the first couple of months. I don't know why I continued to always just be there for her when she needed it while getting nothing in return. To add to that, it was university: she was out there living her own life, and maybe it was time for me to do the same. If I had realized this then, my first year might have been a whole lot happier.
So, for my part (so that I don't risk becoming a non-practicing preacher), I am going to start attemping to let go and forget about some things in my life. Let's see how this turns out. Life is too short to live worring about things that don't matter...unless of course death just means more life in a different way, in which case I guess life isn't as short as its made out to seem. But we still probably shouldn't worry about unimportant things either way. We've got plenty of more pressing matters to deal with anyway, so we might as well drop the extra weight. It'll make this short (or, depending on the outcome of death, long) life that much more livable.