Information, on anything, fascinates me. As a result, I’ve subscribed to plenty of newsletters, blogs and websites to gather data. As time passed, this hoarding resulted in a piled up inbox with unread mails to be read ‘not now’. I decided to get clever, and moved all my subscriptions to a new email id. Good plan it seemed like, except that in a week, the new inbox was choked with unread wisdom from New Scientist, Bartlett Architecture, Craft Collective, Trend Watchers, Guardian and more. Not to mention the fashion stores I’d shared my email id with.
I persisted for some time, deleting the mails as they came into the inbox since I was no longer interested in reading all of them. Some had lost relevance. Some I had grown out of. Some didn’t tickle my mind. I decided to be brave and impolite. And decided to cut the umbilical cords that held me to so many worlds. I unsubscribed.
It seemed like such a simple thing yet it took me a while to get there. I was running on auto-pilot, reading, replying and deleting mails. It never occurred to me to let something go for good. The ‘what if it does me some good sometime’ hung somewhere in the air. I realised I would never know, but shedding the weight made life healthier and the inbox leaner.
The same works for my mind, my space, my home, my body as well. There are so many things I’ve subscribed to in life that have stopped working for me, that don’t nourish me, that make me unhappy. I’d like to unsubscribe to them. So off go the pants I’ve been holding onto thinking I’ll get to a size 6 someday. Off go the books that I’ve never read and if I am to be honest, I will never read. Off goes the need to please everyone all the time. Off goes ‘I will recycle this into something’ basket that only had things going in and never being taken out. Off go the TV shows I have to watch or I will die. Off goes the habit of giving unsolicited advice. I am unsubscribing from all these things in my life, and without as much as a diet, I’ve lost so much weight. My mind feels less bogged down by all the things that were in my life that didn’t nourish me, qualities I didn’t care for, things I could do without.
I don’t think we own anything in our selves; they are all subscribed to, like apps on an ipad. We can choose to let go. And subscribe to a new life.
