What Do People Hold On To?

Imaginary Family Feud game show time again!

Yesterday, I asked you to imagine a game show question centered on what people let go of.

Today, our imaginary game show host voice asks: “What do people hold on to? Top Google search answers below:”

(Imagine answers revealing themselves one-at-a-time in some intriguing way.)

            -Parachute

            -Hat

            -Security

            -One’s Center/ One’s Self

            -Higher Power

            -Thread

            -Loved Ones

            -Job

            -Beliefs

            -Nothing in particular . . . just holding on

            -Information

            -Health

            -Money

I will definitely hold on to my parachute if my husband ever wears down my defenses and gets me to go skydiving, and I hold on to my hat if I’m ever wearing one and it’s trying to run off. I might say I’m hanging on by a thread sometimes. But I really wasn’t thinking of those kinds of things when I asked what people hold on to.

The other items on this list are certainly things that people (myself included) expend much energy and emotion clutching. Holding on to some things is hugely important. Other things really aren’t as important and probably shouldn’t be grasped as tightly as we might be doing.

And then, there are those things/people that we’ve never picked up to hold that we really should.

I’d love to hear what you’d add to our game show list above.

Knowing what to hold and what to release isn’t always as easy as I may have made it sound. Life decisions and actions can be confusing. The voices inside our heads and being thrown towards us from the outside are not unlike congressional bills, with all the special interest strings attached, whose urgings could result in us picking up or putting down things that we don’t want to change as we attempt to address the main decision of the moment.

Such moments of decision are darned good times for the famous Serenity Prayer.

You know, even though I’m guilty of saying it, upon reflection, “Just hold on . . . “ isn’t really good advice. It doesn’t even make sense. “Holding on,” by it’s very nature requires something to be held to. Holding to nothing . . . I think that’s about as far as the popular “just hold on” phrase gets us.

This blog post is part of a series of writing (May 31-June 2012) by Tammy Fletcher Bergland about holding on and letting go.   tbergland.blogspot.com