The final weekend

I can feel the end of life as I've known it for over 25 years. No matter how I've longed for this and worked hard to get here to this shift point, as I'm poised over the intersection between the life I've grown accustomed to and the life I will move into, I feel poignancy. I can't help it. It's inevitable.

As one moves through life, one must, gracefully as possible, continue to move one's life along consciously, through time, at the same time, and at about the same speed, in a mirroring fashion. The former happens anyway, completely non-consciously. The latter involves conscious reconnaissance, taking new bearings, re-navigating, making new maps of new shorelines.

A life, consciously lived, seems to involve putting things away and into the past, no matter how much one might have enjoyed one's interaction with them, and moving along willingly, consciously making room for new. This happens all the way along anyway. It happens biologically in the womb, as the developing egg leaves behind its egg "shell," its zona pellucida, it's first ever "blankie." Later the fetus has to leave behind its placenta, its second "blankie." Later, it involves letting go of toys, actual tattered blankets perhaps, stages of childhood, various levels of interactions with one's parents. Later still, it involves letting go of outgrown social roles, various constructs of self, beliefs one may have once entertained or even clung to fiercely, places, and people. It involves being left behind by those who die. Finally, it involves letting go of life itself, oneself, saying goodbye to that too. As gracefully and honestly and openly and with as few regrets as possible. All the "blankies" one ever projected solace onto. I totally get the idea in Buddhism about attachment/detachment. It's the main key to becoming and remaining contented, no matter what else might be going on.

I'm learning that the less material I have to deal with, actual "things" that take up time and consideration, the better my brain seems to be working and the more time and peaceful leisure I have for things like being on Facebook, exploring attachment on another level, practicing making a "group" and a "page" and "friending" people. It's all good. Then I'll be detached from that too, for a few days, as I wend my way through the mountains driving a loaded minivan, back to the land of nearly perpetual sunshine and big blue sky. That will feel good too, in its own way.