Letting Go
Daily Meditation #329–1/18/2023
I’m a big time lover of feeding my squirrels and birds.
Every morning like clockwork, I’m out there around 7, rattling the seeds in a plastic scoop and whistling some song from Stardew Valley, Banjo Kazooie, Final Fantasy or some other thing.
And equally as clockwork, the birds and my hoard of squirrels — lovingly referred to by me as my veverečký — come out of the woodwork within minutes.
They wait for the clarion call of breakfast and come running.
But, I will soon be travelling for some time…
And the thought has been passing through my mind — what will they do?
What will they think when the whistling doesn’t happen?
Will they be able to find enough to eat in the dead of winter?
And the answer I’ve had to come to terms with is this:
I need to let go.
It doesn’t matter.
Some day I will move — not now, not next year, but someday.
Some day — maybe tonight in my sleep, maybe in the flight or on the road — I’ll die.
The birds, squirrels, my fiancée (soon wife), my parents, my cat, and all my lovely friends and family will be just fine without me.
Perhaps not right away, but they will be fine. They will have to be. And I’ll have to accept that, too.
And isn’t it a hard thought to have? The thought of your life without your spouse, parents or friends because they’re dead is excruciating…
But isn’t it an even harder thought to think of them grieving you? Moving on without you? Struggling and feeling the pain of loss?
But they will heal.
They will be okay.
This sort of “inverted letting go” is important.
We can only do so much to prepare others for the loss of us. And for some of them, they will bury their head in the sand and ignore the thoughts — and that’s their choice!
But us? We will meditate on death each day and hold it dear to us. We will acknowledge it exists and persists and will get us one day.
It is no loss, at all.
We will all be just fine, one day, despite our losses.
I promise.
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These are distillations from my coming book “YouDaimonia: the Ancient Philosophy of Human Flourishing.”
