Being let go.
written by Julie R. Neidlinger 3 comments link this postGirl Friday's recent post got me to thinking:
But here I am, twenty-nine years old and slipping in and out of someone else's reality; a fear that can't be my own. I love the people in my life. My life without them would hardly look like my own.I, like other people, am afraid of being forgotten, my life not remembered. Loreena McKennit puts it poetically on her "Book of Days" album. She sings around the subject, invoking the ocean and all things great, but it comes down to one line: Please remember me.
Being remembered is important to people, especially if they think that this life is all they get. A new book, The Brief History of the Dead, touches on the importance of this by setting up an alternate plane of existence where those who have died only exist as long as someone alive remembers them. I find this horrifying, the idea that my existence would be wrenched from my control and placed in the wispy basket of memory, casually handed over to other people, people who might not cherish it as I would.
Julie? Oh yeah, remember her? Barely. She was like the color gray, nothing much, I imagine them saying. And then they toss me out of the basket.
Though this is only a science fiction book and not reality, I still allow people a fraction of that power every time I grasp at straws when I realize that someone is willing to let me "slip out of their reality." They are willing to let me go, in all ways. The check's paid up, the beautiful dinner is over, and they are out the door.
There is something else, though, something worse than being let go, being forgotten. What could be worse than someone letting you go when you don't want them to? What could be worse than being forgotten?
It isn't the fear of slipping in and out of someone's reality. It's realizing you've never even made it in.
Labels: relationships
Copyright (c) Julie R. Neidlinger 3/04/2006 07:07:00 PM
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3 Comments:
What is permanent? What makes a mark and lasts forever? Good questions. The answer for me is: (can you hear the drumroll) - SOULS and The Word of God or Spiritual Truth. So I choose to invest my life in these things that are eternal and truly important. So many things in our lives are so temporal, but these are not - these investments will remain and make a mark long after your fleshly body dies and all the belongings you worked so hard for are given to someone else. How do I apply this - learning and teaching spiritual truth (God's Word) and making people important - not stuff or other forms of self-indulgence - but people (especially children, for me) OK, I'll quit preaching a sermon now. :) Just thought I'd share my insight on the topic - don't know if I communicated it very well though. Did anyone get what I'm trying to say?
By 
Tracy, at
4/3/06 21:10
I think you'd have to build a pyramid to be remembered a very long time. What happens if you're buried...forgotten for eons....dug up and remembered? (ie: King Tut.) Do you go back "that place?"
More importantly to this secular humanist is how one is perceived in the here and now.
By Nodak Jack, at
5/3/06 08:13
I've been there Julie. Silence, distance, then absence. You realize you weren't really "in" after all.
The other comments make me think of Lewis' "We find by experience that there is no good applying to Heaven for earthly comfort. Heaven can give heavenly comfort; no other kind. Ultimately there is no earthly comfort."
Courage.
By girlfriday, at
7/3/06 18:14
