On letting go of attachments
Tuesday, 25 september, 2007, 8.40 pm: Several (five or six?) months ago Harbans and I made a very difficult decision. We decided to put our home on the market, sell up and relocate. At the time we thought we would be moving to Turramurra or Wahroonga on the upper North Shore of Sydney, near our beautiful grandchildren, Hannah and Veronika. On Thursday, 30 August, after a six-week campaign, the log-awaited auction was held at the offices of Park Beachside, in Arden Street, Coogee Beach. The house, which had been a part of my family since February, 1985, was sold at auction. While we did not get the price we felt it was worth, we nevertheless sold it at a price we can live with. It was very difficult for me to let go, but let go I finally did!
We had begun to look for a suitable property at least two months before the auction, at first on the north shore, then in the Blue Mountains and, finally, on the mid-north coast. We began with Karuah. Eventually we decided on Port Macquarie, for a variety of reasons. Finally, last week, we located a four-bedroom house and took a six-months lease on it, intending to buy something soon. We actually booked the removalist before we had found a new home! The following day we found one!
So, on Monday 8 October the removalists will collect our earthly attachments and, the following day - Tuesday, 9 October - we begin our new lives in Port Macquarie. We have no jobs to go to, no clear plan and no certainty that the choice was the right one. We go only with faith. We go only with a vague sense of "rightness", that is, a sense that this is what we need to do, at this point in our journey. I turned sixty less than a week after the auction. I have always felt that I would like to leave our house in the inner city by he time I turn 60. That, too, feels right.
In the meantime, on Sunday, 23 September, Veronika and Hannah turned five. My God, how quickly that seems to have happened! The birthday party, in a hall in West Lindfield, was really special.
The next big step will be to let go of as many of my personal papers, including my diaries, as possible. Perhaps when I turn 70? I am feeling very unsettled, very insecure. But that is the price we pay for being alive, as opposed to existing. I am reluctant to use words like conscious or awake (because i have a very long way to go) but the feelings of insecurity and "unsettledness" are, indeed, the price we pay if we choose to be conscious, if we choose to be awake. It is a big price, actually, but it is a price I am willing to pay.
posted by Andrew Reiner at 9/25/2007 08:40:00 pm
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