When It Leaves Us

Jatayu Earth Center, Kerala, India

We will come to lose everything we love.

So it’s best to hold onto it gently with care and attention, while we still have it. 

That may, paradoxically, be the only way we don’t lose it.

Accepting the fragility of life is the very thing that will allow us to truly value it. 

Our strained relationship with endings robs us of enjoying the very thing we’re scared of losing. We either suffer an all-consuming fear of its pending arrival or we pretend like we don’t see it. 

When we worry about inevitable endings, we squander away precious time. We drift away from the gift of the present moment and what we have in front of us. We condemn ourselves to the very thing we fear so much. 

Ignoring its existence also disempowers us. We keep ourselves from honoring one of the most fundamental truths of life: it is death that gives life so much value. Endings teach us to enjoy what we have while we have it, to savor its every facet and bathe in its light.

The truth is we’ll never feel like we’ve had enough time. Ruminating on what we didn’t have steals us from focusing on what we did have.

We must be brave enough to love and to live, knowing all we have and all that we are is fleeting. It will all come to pass. It will all leave us, or we will leave it.

It is the brave and wise who choose to fully love something with their heart wide open while knowing it will all come to an end at any given time. 

It’s acceptance, it’s releasing resistance, that opens us up to truly love and to fully live. 

This is how we immortalize anything. Holding a moment so tenderly that we memorize it in its entirety. 

It’s only then that we can get our fill.

It’s only then that we will recognize that it was, indeed, enough time