Our lives are like a bucket that we struggle to keep filled with water. It seems that we would be doomed if the water in our bucket were ever to drain completely away. The issue is that problems in our relationships with others in our lives, whether friends, families, co-workers, acquaintances, create holes in our bucket from which the precious, life-sustaining water escapes. It seems that just when we get one hole patched up and leak-tight, either through a permanent fix or a temporary patch job, another one opens up. Sometimes it seems like we can never get to a point where our bucket is full and completely intact.To me, repair work to my bucket, to those relationships that are broken or damaged, takes such a long time. It takes so much energy and work. I have come to the point where it seems like it is just not worth it. With so many people in our world and in our lives, it seems easier and more prudent just to cut away the problem areas and start again. Start again with others who don't know of our baggage or our issues or our past. Sometimes too, when we allow people to get too close to us, they serve as an anchor to our pasts when it would actually be much healthier to cut that rope and sail to a whole new place. A place without that drag or shadow or presence, where we can find freedom to let the past go. To heal. To reinvent ourselves. To wipe the slate clean. To start over with a fresh new bucket.