Sometimes we can’t let go. I think before accepting it’s time to walk away, we often dance around circles in our heads, making hopeful excuses for staying just a bit longer. However, the humbling truth is when a fuse goes out, it’s out. When reality kicks in, we realize it’s not that we cannot let go, it’s that we refuse to let go. I think much of this is rooted in denial. It’s when we bask in the past, recalling when everything was once upon a time going so well, so perfectly - using memories as a convenient excuse to ignore the present reality that something fundamental has changed, and is broken.

Nothing is permanent. Sometimes we encounter someone or something that meant a lot to us at a specific time, but that transient significance doesn’t always transcend to perpetual. It’s reminiscent of a fire burning out after burning so ardently. The thing about ardent burning is that the fire is so strong, it seems invincible and all-powerful, so when it fizzles out, it’s fathomable that we start to tie ourselves in knots trying to understand what made the fire unsurvivable. With time we’d come to realize, it was perhaps meant to be unsurvivable, like a candle burning until it can’t anymore.

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There’s a Japanese art called ‘kintsugi’ . It’s the conversion of broken ceramics into whole again by mending the areas of breakage typically with powdered gold.

Maybe we have to break to mend again beautifully but we may have to leave first for this to be a possibility; or perhaps even better, we could be mended by something entirely new. But sometimes, we may have to walk away completely, learn from what was lost and move on with the hope of something even more worth it being on its way.

Until the next one

-C