Shedding Skins

Like peeling an onion, shedding skin after skin, after skin we strip our lives down to the minimum. We reduce and concentrate, until nothing but the core is left. And it's not a soft, tender core, but rather a strong, resilient essence of who we really are!

It all started with the "beginning of the end", when we gave away a member of our family. After that, we found ourselves in such a whirlpool of shaving excess, that to this moment, we're still rolling down "simplicity" hill and finding the greatest pleasure of live in not POSSESSING! 

As soon as we found out that we were moving out of the US, the grain of change planted deep into the core  of our fortress of material possessions and started devouring the foundation of what we used to perceive as security. Barely anything, ever made the cut anymore. We could strip it all to the bone and contrary to our expectations, live seemed brighter than before.

And now, a time for a cliche: "What you possess, possesses you!"

(Slogans, as I've written before, are far removed from our daily reality. With their blatant idealism, they seem to frustrate our everyday live and trow us out of balance. The truth, however, is that our balance is based on falseness and the smallest glimpse of the truth, is sometimes capable of shattering the illusion.)

So, the more we shaved, the closer to ourselves we felt. You may remember when I wrote you that we traded our "TV for a fireplace". One of the more surprising things was that after we shipped 400 kilos, or 880 pounds of stuff to Bulgaria,...we didn't care if it would sink deep into the Atlantic. Because we just found out that we were doing just fine without it.

The only thing - the symbolism of our "style" - was what we missed a bit. Every piece of furniture, every ornament, every piece of art, was torn from our hearts. Our family stance, our comfort zone was going away too. For we are FAR from perfect, and the attachment to our things remained. As I delve in it now, I find it to be nothing but fear and insecurity. Those feelings go away as soon as you find your own self underneath the artifacts.

Possibly most painful of all will be the moment, when after two weeks we'll step out of the door of our home and say "goodbye!" Goodbye to the place we became FAMILY in! Goodbye to the nest, the retreat, the solid ground. And we'll fly. Freer? Happier? I don't know. Is our happiness locked within those four walls though? I doubt it. Well, our privacy and security definitely are part of our happiness, but I think they are just pillars, holding up the illusion of comfort, when all we need is its ABSENCE, so we can strive to grow. 

So, here we are: in an empty house, with fuller hearts! Our minds, excited by the fact that we feel so comfortable in a place with nothing but a bed, a couch, a fridge, a stove, a lap-top and a bunch of toys (cause Sami hasn't gotten to the point of philosophical realizations that we have and still loves his toys) !

Stripping down the layers....

It's like loads of weight come off our shoulders. It's liberating, it's cathartic, it's surprising. Like Benjamin Button, we're going back to our roots. To what really matters:

Love, Family, Growth! 

FOREVER!