Casting Off

In the 1959 Arthur Millar play ‘Death of a Salesman’, one of the main characters utters the phrase ‘life is a casting off’ alluding to the many layers of things which must be shed, released and let go throughout our lifetimes.

“WILLY: Figure it out. Work a lifetime to pay off a house. You finally own it, and there’s nobody to live in it. 

LINDA: Well, dear, life is a casting off. It’s always that way”.

I’ve had that phrase in my mind all week this week as I ask myself the big questions about what my priorities should be. Call it a midlife crisis if you must, but honestly I’ve been thinking this way forever. Like a salesman driving up and down the same highways which all look the same, I’ve spent too much time on autopilot in life in a way that I regret. Time now suddenly seems to be speeding up; my children are displaying a sense of humour and fun at home that speaks to the sophistication of their growing age, a wit that makes me ache with both deep belly laughs and stark realisation that the passage of time will take this all away from us before I know it.

In sharp full-body awareness of this, I am filled with an urgency to cast off every possible obstacle to treasuring what time there is with them. Divorce has already robbed us of so much time together and that grief is fresh every week when I am forced to let them go, more so this week because they are leaving for a week of holiday and I don’t really have words for how unnatural it feels to know they are so far away. There is only one way to survive a feeling like that sometimes and it involves action, doing something that resembles fighting for your life in a way, something that shifts you out of autopilot. So, not to be a total cliche, but this week I shall be doing a ruthless spring clean with some assistance, casting off clutter, tackling some tax returns and taking quiet time to make sure I am staying committed to the practice of casting off any unresolved resentments. I’ll be carving out space in my life this month and leaving it empty for only the right things to enter next. (I allude to my family situation here,by the way, simply because it is my current life experience, but I acknowledge here too that we all have our wildernesses to walk in and our sorrows to carry across the desert.)

In the next line of “Death of a Salesman’, Willy says ‘No, no, some people- some people accomplish something’. I think the number one thing I want to accomplish in life is to cast off old narratives. All families have stories, some that feel noble and some that feel like curses that pass from generation to generation. For me, the quiet work of generational story-transformation is the most important casting off of all. I ask myself what stories have I been handed down that need to be cast off? What would it look like to step into tomorrow without carrying them anymore? How much can we cast off so that we may skip and dance instead of trudging?

This work, dear friends, it is urgent. Letting go is the hardest thing, but if letting go of things that stand in the way of us truly living our precious lives will change life for the better, then we have to find a way. This is our LIFE that is happening right now.

So what about you? What things are you ready to cast off? What will doing so leave more space for? We can do this.

A wee painting from this week inspired by thoughts of those with older relatives living with dementia and memory loss, experimenting with trying to loosen my style, embrace my dark colour palette side and ‘cast off’ ideas of what illustration “should” look like.