The Surprise of Letting Go

Sometimes you must let things go

simply because they are too heavy

For nearly 4 years, I drove almost every day to see my son in the State Hospital - a distance of about an hour and a half each way. Needless to say, I had a lot of opportunity to collect quite a playlist in my Pandora “Thumbs Up” station.

I gave some songs the thumbs up because they brightened my spirits. Some got the thumbs up because they matched my mood, shared my anger and frustration, or spoke to my heart. Some got saved because the lyrics said the things I needed to say, but couldn’t.

Lately, though, I had become aware of a tendency I had to continually skip songs. While I still liked the songs, I didn’t want to revisit the memories the songs brought to me. So I moved on to the next song….and the next one…..and the next one…..clicking through until I found something that would float me along on my way to work without bringing up too much emotion.

Thank goodness for the Pandora Premium plan that allows unlimited skipping. With all the tapping of the right arrow I was doing, I was definitely getting my money’s worth.

Then Pandora decided to log me out of my account (for some unknown reason) and, on trying to log back in, I realized that I had forgotten my username and password. I tried every combination with no luck. In frustration, I reached for the Internet Life Vest - the “Forgot Password” button.

I immediately got an email to reset my password, which I did (and wrote down just in case….) but then discovered that Pandora, in its wisdom, requires one to enter the old password before changing to a new one.

Obviously, this was a problem - and a programming design flaw - given that the whole reason I was at this point was because I had forgotten my old password! How was I supposed to enter it?

The only way around this whole dilemma was to delete my account and start over again. This worked great to get me back into Pandora, but all my saved music was gone. On logging in, Pandora welcomed me as a new user and invited me to start adding music to the currently empty library.

What surprised me most about this was that I was not in the least bit sad to lose the music I had saved. In fact, I felt a sudden weight lift off of me. I was relieved to be able to start over again with new and fresh tunes. My library no longer contained the songs with all the painful, poignant, or angry memories attached to them. It contained nothing at all - a new place for me to start from.

I’m not suggesting that you purge your music library, although for me it was a sudden and surprisingly refreshing experience. However, I am suggesting that you pay attention to how you’re feeling about things you’re carrying around. If those things are no longer serving you, just as my old collection of songs was no longer bringing me peace or happiness, consider letting them go.

The memories will still be there if you need to visit them, but I think you’ll find that you won’t need to.

Roy T. Bennett said, “Accept yourself, love yourself, and keep moving forward. If you want to fly, you have to give up what weighs you down.”

Yes - give up what weighs you down. Even if it’s as simple as a Pandora Playlist.