The scene: crazy, wild-eyed therapist wielding a hammer in the hot August sun, joyfully smashing electronics.
I was cleaning out my basement this past weekend and stumbled upon an old laptop of mine. Two inches thick. 17 pounds of cutting edge technology. I wanted to recycle it since I had no use for it anymore, but I also knew that I had some personal information on the hard drive that I didn't want to end up in the hands of some middle Tennessee hacker. I tried to turn it on to remove these old files, but it was so ancient that the screen didn't work. In the end, I was able to remove the hard drive, and found myself out on my driveway, pounding the poor pitiful thing with a hammer.
A HAMMER...I was pummeling the hard drive of this dusty old broken down laptop with A HAMMER, when only a handful of years ago, it was my prized possession. I had worked and saved for this precious piece of machinery. I had spent hours researching and looking into the best models. I remember the day it arrived; it was so shiny and new and beautiful! I felt so proud of myself for being a grown up and having a real, adult computer! It was the laptop I had while living in New York and it had gotten me through grad school. I would carefully tote this brick of a machine around the subway system and into downtown Manhattan in a protective sleeve, cherishing it like it was my baby. And here I was, smashing my lifeblood with A FREAKING HAMMER.
As I was reigning down blows upon it, it became very real to me how fragile and impermanent we are. How everything changes in an instant. How the most important things in our lives disappear and change and die and move and lose their value and get smashed by crazy therapists with hammers. I was overcome with the passing nature of our delicate humanity, and how we cannot cling to anything.
In this moment, I had a (mini, Sarah-sized) revelation. My suffering so often comes from clinging to the past - i.e. toting the old laptops of my life around with me, wishing they would work again, praying that God would heal them, hoping that one day, if I hit power button just right, everything would come on again - OR worrying about the future - i.e. putting off having the working laptops of my life because something better might come along, and what if I pick the wrong one, or what if I regret the choice I make, or what if the one I choose breaks down someday, what will I do?!? - I get so caught up in the regrets from the past or worries about the future that I miss the moments. The here and now moments of gratitude and enough-ness. What if I could learn to just be right here, right now, smashing this hard drive with wild, unfettered abandon in the warm summer sun, grateful for the exercise and the abundance within and around me. And I realized that this is it. This is my life. My one wild and precious and crazy and bumbling and computer-smashing life. Right here, right now. This is it.