Letting go… of a good thing

As I type this, I hear the waves in the background. I lift my head and feel the warm sea breeze and gaze into the ocean. I could sit on this reclining chair in the balcony of our hotel room watching the gulls, swaying palms and ocean churning out blue foamy waves forever. Yet my bags stand packed inside and within half an hour we will be driving to the airport. A few years ago, we went to the Great Wolf Lodge, a water park and stayed there for a day. We thought two days of constant water play was enough. Our child thought otherwise. She sobbed all the way back home. No amount of consoling, cajoling, rationalizing and even threats would make her stop. The end of a vacation or a good time can be a difficult moment to handle. For at its brink stands reality, responsibility, real life. And this is for a straight plain vacation. Leaving or re-leaving India and close family and friends is a different emotional matter altogether. That inexplicable sinking feeling bears heavy. True, there is that certain ease and pleasure of sleeping in your own bed, in your own home, in your own surroundings. On your own turf, where everything is familiar, where you’re back in charge, where you look at old things with new appreciation. Perhaps memories of warm weather, nature scapes, and people will waft in and out. Perhaps I will smile at those and hopefully, let them go… for holding on can only create dissatisfaction or sadness in the present. Perhaps I can apply the rejuvenation and renewed energy to real life with its sobering reality that awaits my return. Yes. Letting go of a good thing is a hard thing to let go of. But I want to let it go just like I let go of the warm lapping wave the licked my feet yesterday and disappeared back into the vastness of the ocean…it was there, it brought me joy, and it was gone…back into the infinite…

view from our room...