Dear Ludic Liberators,
This summer has been a season of reluctantly and willfully letting things go. I moved from a house I have lived in for the last 5 years, painfully separated from important relationships, and gave up beloved pieces of furniture I once anxiously selected or decorated or dragged with me across the country. I also learned my Ludic Liberation Instagram account was unexplainably banned and deleted, resulting in the permanent loss of the Lab’s digital history on that platform.
I told a friend that these events would probably be completely devastating — if only I also wasn’t the kind of person who loved to turn over every existential leaf and play with everything. So I’m challenging myself this Fall to play with Letting Go. After all, what could be more liberating than releasing our attachments?
Some ludic strategies I’ve tried so far have included staging my own death ceremony on a beach, playing Renunciation — a game that requires you to lose everything to win, and ritually getting rid of stuff that doesn’t serve me anymore. I think I’m getting better at this because the other day I broke my favorite mug, and at first immediately rushed online to replace it with an exact replica. But then I stopped myself and thought, you know, maybe another mug will come into my life in some surprising way and become my favorite. Maybe I’ll just let myself feel the loss of this one for now.
I invite you to come join me in this investigation. Is there something you've recently lost but haven't properly said goodbye to? Have you been holding onto a thing, a relationship, an identity, a dream, or a grudge you know you need to release or break up with? We will explore when something is ready to be released, honor its role in our past, discover its lesson in the present, and welcome the opportunity it leaves in its wake. Don’t worry, you won’t have to give up anything permanently at the Lab if you don’t want to. You can think of this as just practice — a gentle loosening of your grip. As always, we will try to make the difficult and uncomfortable a little more playful and fun 🎈
🗓 THURSDAY, September 14, 2023 🌚
⏰ 6-7:30pm EDT
📍 Zoom
🎟 FREE but registration required (and space is limited)!