Have you ever been witness to the release of a Chinese lantern? I experienced it in person over the summer with my wife’s family and it was an absolute thing of beauty.
The flame is lit and the temperature of the air inside the lantern increases while you hold onto it. As the air inside the lantern heats up, it gets lighter and lighter until that magic moment when it it is so much lighter than the air around it that you can release it and watch it float away into the sky.
My hope, in writing this post, is that I will have a new found lightness that frees me from some of the self-limiting talk that is holding me back at the moment. It’s as though the spirit inside me is heating up and is so light now that the pain of continuing to hold on is greater than the potential pain that will come from taking the risk.
This is my act of letting the lantern go.
