“There’s a trick to the ‘graceful exit.’ It begins with the vision to recognize when a job, a life stage, or a relationship is over — and let it go. It means leaving what’s over without denying its validity or its past importance to our lives. It involves a sense of future, a belief that every exit line is an entry, that we are moving up, rather than out.”
―Ellen Goodman, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and founder of “The Conversation Project
There's so much in this for each of us. How can we embrace the paradigm that an exit is "moving up" rather than "moving out?"
To recognize that one stage of life, a job or a position ending is about awareness and attention. It is about discernment. It is about doing something that appears to be counter-cultural and perhaps counter-intuitive. But it is taking a step and giving up the seduction of safety for a new beginning--a beginning that is not an ending but a higher plane--a different way of being altogether.
It's my observation that most of us hold on to positions too long because in the actual position or work, we find our identity--an identity based on performance, doing, and achieving. In my work, I’m afraid that I have been a witness of men, in particular, who hold on to power and position for far, far too long without the awareness of what this gripping and white-knuckling is actually doing to them and to others. The energy to hold on is far greater and more intense than it is to let go.
Somewhere along the way, if we are awake and paying attention, we will hear a still, small voice beckoning us: There is something more. There is something different. There is something deeper. There is something higher.
"Moving up" is not about grasping on to our positions and name tags, which validate us in the world's eyes. Moving up is ascending to a higher consciousness and soul health which says, life is not about positions and status at all. It is about something far deeper and far more meaningful. Unless we learn to practice letting go, we will have hoarded far too much stuff, lengthened our resumes and padded our accounts, but our hearts will be empty and our souls in despair. We can lighten the load--step by step; little by little, and bird by bird.
How interesting it is to me that this week is "Holy Week" and being so, we are invited to consider the letting go of Jesus. Perhaps his ungraceful exit is a new moving up.
"Holy Week" is a distinct week to mark in our lives because we are all called to consider a giving up and a deep change that is necessary. For Jesus to "move up" he had to give up and accept the necessary change for him. Our journey is like His--we will need to revisit all of our holding on and consider what this holding on is actually doing to us, and to those we love around us.
After all, in the life and death of Jesus we learn that there is really no life at all if there is not a death of some kind.
For me, pondering this gives me courage to make adjustments, changes, modifications, and new beginnings so I can keep on moving up.
Every Blessing in Holy Week 2021
Stephen W. Smith