At the last clutter busting workshop, a woman brought in some cassette tapes. She looked sad and there were tears in her eyes. There was a lot of emotional pain surrounding these tapes. She revealed that she used to be a musician and these were tapes of her performing her songs. She no longer wrote or performed music. Ten years ago she had decided to let that part of her life go because she had gone broke and went into debt trying to live that lifestyle. She said that she was now working in an office job that was very boring, but it paid her well and gave her insurance.
She held onto the cassette tapes tightly. She was grieving for her creativity. I asked if she listened to the cassettes anymore. She said no, that it was too painful. At the same time, she was resistant to letting them go. I asked if she could release the cassettes. There were more tears and sorrow.
Since she wasn't listening to the tapes, and their presence was causing her great pain, and they weren't inspiring her to be creative again, I suggested she let them go. I said that when things that are no longer a part of our life go, it opens the space for new and vital things to come into our life. By vital I mean it serves and feeds us now. At one time, this music was vital for her, but now it wasn't. Now it was causing her pain and suffering.
It hurts us to halt our creativity. We're all creative. We have different ways of expressing our creative natures. The cassettes were a road block for this woman's creativity. Who knows what her new creative outlet would be, but it would have great potential for bringing her heart back to life.
She saw the pain the cassettes were causing her. They were greater than the memories. She dumped the cassettes in the trash. Her anguish was gone. She got her first new thing which was peace of mind.