Let Go

                The other night I had a dream.  I was dangling from a ladder attached to a metal catwalk, bolted to a mountainside.  Below me was an endless drop, and a tiny metal platform that my mother was standing on.  The rungs of the ladder were just far enough apart to make climbing down impossible.  I was holding on for dear life.  My knuckles turning white as I gripped the cold metal.  My palms were sweaty, I looked down and the shock of it made it hard to breathe.  I tried to pull myself up higher, but my arms were too weak.  The platform beneath me was just far enough of a fall to be dangerous.  Then my Mom yelled up at me, “ Climb down you pansy… LET GO!”

               I was watching a TV show the other day, there was a man in rehab and he was told to ‘Let go and Let God’.  This expression pissed me off.  No one can ‘let’ God do anything.  If God exists and he is some kind of omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, creator entity, then there is no letting him do anything.  The truth is if there is a God, he is some kind of voyeur.  A perverted, tabloid journalist junkie who apparently loves watching people when they are at their most vulnerable.  Just waiting in the wings to hack your email, but in his case he doesn’t need to, because he sees all.  He sees all and does nothing.  And of course we were made in his image which is why human beings are disgusting pathetic, self- gratifying people.  We are all hoping against hope that there is another car accident, or natural disaster, or celeb sex scandal, so we have something to watch.  So, we can sit and watch and not do anything.  Just soak in the horror to make ourselves feel better.   

                I don’t know what the dream meant.  Maybe it means I feel like I am on the edge of something.  With no safety net, no parachute, and no one to catch me.  Maybe it means that I need to take a risk, a leap of faith.  Maybe I am just afraid of heights and my mother’s judgement.  I guess maybe all us of need to let go.  To let life happen.  To move forward, and keep moving forward.  We don’t need to let go and let God.  We need to let go and let ourselves be.  Be what we truly want to be.  Get off the sidelines.  Stop watching and do.  It may be sappy and trite and contrived and clichéd.  I for one have hope that when I let go of the ladder the fall won’t hurt because I know I made a choice.  Maybe not the ‘right’ choice, but a choice nonetheless.  Choice is what it is all about.