The Beauty of Leaving Things Alone

Musings on the uninhabited, the overgrown, and the abandoned

Today’s tumble down the rabbit hole began with a picture.

It continued with another picture.

And then another.

Can you see a trend?

My fascination led me to create an Abandoned Beauties Pinterest board and to join a Facebook group with the same name.

It’s a negatively charged word, abandon. Isn’t it? It implies the neglect of things that shouldn’t be neglected. Something that in many cases cannot be forgiven.

But in these pictures, there is a peculiar beauty that’s the precise result of abandonment. Nature has taken over. In a way, a higher order is restored. An order that doesn’t need, allow or benefit from human intervention.

Things begin to grow or decay, on a journey back to the earth. It’s free, wild, and powerful.

Perhaps there is something we can learn here: that there is an unusual space where abandon is good, healthy. Beautiful, even.

Abandon is the failure to look after something, after all — not just to let it go, but to let it go for good. So what if we chose to abandon the things that hold us back? Feelings of fear and self-loathing, toxic people and relationships? Projects, preconceptions and ideas that are stagnant or just plain bad?

What if we chose to walk away and leave these things alone?

To stay alive, these examples require an active effort from us. They need looking after and feeding, which we do with our love, our time, or our emotional stamina, to name a few. These are limited resources, that we have a finite amount of.

So what if we stopped feeding them? If we let the dust settle, and let nature take its course?

Wouldn’t that be nice?

I often think that in this era of information overload and inclination to always be doing, that we forget that some things are better off without us, and we’re better off without some things.

We forget the beauty in rest, silence, and stillness. The beauty that can arise when we remove ourselves. The relief in knowing that not everything merits our efforts or even our attention.

I like to think that I have an old, decrepit house made of the things that I’ve abandoned throughout the years. Former versions of myself, people or situations that were not good for me, bad habits or ideas.

Once in a while, I’ll make my way through a path of tangled weeds to pay the old house a visit. Perhaps I do it to see if I remember it correctly, perhaps because I’m nostalgic. I remember how the lights used to sparkle, or the way music once played. I remember the joy different rooms once gave me.

I find objects that once worked, but are now broken because I haven’t used them in so long. Deep down, I know I could probably still fix a number of them. But if they are in the house, they are there for a reason. I remember that.

Other times, I find things that I didn’t choose to put there, and that can be hard. But abandon works both ways, after all.

And when it’s dark, sometimes I hear a noise. A step, a crack or a rustle. I wonder if I’m really alone, or if someone else is visiting my house. Maybe it means someone is revisiting a shared memory at the same time as me. Maybe it’s just the wind.

There is something eerie about abandoned places, and my house is no exception. But before I veer off into the tragic or haunted, let me tell you about its beauty.

Plants have crawled through places I never thought possible. Nature commands where gravity allows. Glass windows have broken and pure light now cascades in.

The living room smells of rain. Animals have made nests and homes.

The rooms are not like they were, but they are beautiful in their own way. The walls have holes, and within them, life has found a way. There is a calming silence.

I realize I am proud of what I have abandoned when I could have clung. That better things are happening, growing.

Still, I know that I can’t stay in my house for too long. The same way that I feed a plant so that it stays alive, I know that my abandoned house needs me gone to continue on its path. And if I stay, I will become part of the house. Part of the past. Part of the moss.

So I make my way out. Grateful to have visited, and grateful to be leaving once again.