The Regret of Letting Go

Have you ever let go of something and then realized later you needed it?  Have you ever missed an outfit you no longer own?  Have you ever been in the process of fixing something and realized you had tossed that missing piece months ago because you didn’t know what it was?

I think we have all had this experience and it is part of why we hang on to things.  As a culture we have a hard time letting go as evidenced by the number of storage units we have everywhere.  It’s a great business because once a person has a storage unit, they usually keep it for a long time.  It’s a great place to “save” things, even if it costs a lot!

Case and Point:

When I graduated with my doctorate, my father gave me a very nice desk chair.  I had the chair for 30 years!  It was worn badly so I had it reupholstered.  Not long after,  the mechanisms on the chair began to fail and I discovered it could not be easily replaced. There were hundreds of different mechanisms to chose from and there was no way of knowing unless you ordered the part.  It was time to let it go.

The chair undoubtedly had sentimental value but having a broken chair in the house didn’t make any sense.  Putting it in a storage unit or attic didn’t make sense either since I would never be able to use it again and it ok up too much space.  So I wheeled it to the curb and said goodbye. 

Just as I was walking away, a pickup truck pulls up and asks if he could have the chair.  I said yes and explained the broken mechanism but he didn’t seem to care and seemed pretty happy to get what looked like a brand new chair.  

The moment he was driving away, my regret surfaced.  Should I have kept it?  What if it really wasn’t broken?  

These thoughts were weird to me because  I am a very decisive person.  I almost always make up my mind and then never change it or look back.  Why was this bothering me?  Why was I so sad?

I finally came to the realization that my  emotions had nothing to do with the chair.  They had to do with my father.  I think all children want to make their parents proud and even though my father was very proud of my accomplishments, he was not emotionally expressive. The chair was his way of expressing those emotions.  My father had died several years earlier.  He had dementia the last remaining years of his life so his ability to communicate was even more compromised.  Letting go of the chair, felt like letting go of that affirmation from him.  

Sitting here in another comfortable desk chair (that was his).  I realize that he will always be a part of me.  Even though the chair is gone, his gesture of approval provided me with a sense of confidence and emotional stability that I continue to carry.