A few years ago, as I was encountering some bumps in raising my teenage son, I sighed to my therapist, “I guess it’s just time for me to let go.” She looked at me (in her great, great wisdom) and said, “I wouldn’t say that. It might be time to hold on.”
I talked with a friend this week who is dismantling a beloved business that took years to build. They described how strange it was to hit the button that took down the website, but how they knew letting go was the right thing to do.
Much as I love to paint little affirmation cards that say, “Let go,” or “Hold on,” they have to be switched out every day or every moment in a constant rotation.
When my children were young, going through teething, sleeplessness, weaning, all the tumult of entering the world, I learned very quickly—if things are good, enjoy it but don’t get too attached. If things are hard, don’t bellyache too much. It will change quickly.
I talked with another friend this week who is in a completely different place than they were 8 weeks ago. They said simply, “Things change.”
The only thing we can rely on is the truth of impermanence. I think of Andy Goldsworthy and his temporary installations in nature—leaves that will get blown away, rocks that will wash away with the tide. All the labor, planning, and creativity leads up to simply a moment in time that might never get witnessed if he didn’t take a picture of it.
I remind myself every day that the definition of something good isn’t that it lasts forever. Holding on, letting go, holding on, letting go. Breathing in, breathing out, breathing in, breathing out. All we can do is the next right thing, trusting in the act for its own sake—there is no mantra, structure, or modality that will hold true forever.
Fall is the season that reminds us most dramatically that things change. Trees lose their leaves not in an “Oh, well!” kind of accident. The hormonal and chemical bonds between leaves and branches loosen on purpose and the leaves consent to fall so that the tree expends less energy through the harsh winter, the moisture in the trunk is conserved, and wind can blow through the branches without putting too much strain on the tree.
I’ll leave you with my very favorite poem about fall and a wish that you find, in yourself and in the changing natural world around us, the “hid pulse of things.”
Alatus
by Richard Wilbur
Their supply-lines cut,
The leaves go down to defeat,
Turning, flying, but
Bravely so, the ash
Shaking from blade and pennon
May light’s citron flash;
And rock maple, though
Its globed array be shivered,
Strews its fallen so
As to mock the cold,
Blanketing earth with earnest
Of a summer’s gold.
Still, what sumac-gore
Began, and rattling oak shall
End, is not a war;
Nor are leaves the same
(Though May come back in triumph),
Crumpled once by flame.
This time’s true valor
Is a rash consent to change,
To crumbling pallor,
Dust, and dark re-merge.
See how the fire-bush, circled
By a crimson verge
Of its own sifting,
Bristles aloft its every
Naked stem, lifting
Beyond the faint sun,
Toward the hid pulse of things, its
Winged skeleton.