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Everything you love, you'll eventually lose. Or maybe not...
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Q: Hi Susan and team, I have a question, triggered by the last Candlelight Chat.
The question is, if we open up and truly feel how much we care about what we love (dear ones, nature, art…), how to live with the - for me - frightening idea that we cannot protect it?
In Dutch we have a writer, Lucebert, who says “Alles van waarde is weerloos” which translates, “ Everything of value is defenseless”… That idea… I find it rough, and loving kindness sometimes even strenghtens that feeling….
Thanks a lot for your much appreciated insights and sharings… Have a lovely day!
-Kristien Geurts
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Dear Kristien,
When I read your profound and timeless question, the first thing I did was ask how old you are, and you said you were 39. “I asked your age,” I explained, “because I used to suffer the sensation you describe very acutely. And now, at 56, I feel I've really accepted that everything of value is defenseless.”
I told you that I’d “try to think of what happened exactly to bring forth this acceptance.”
But Kristien - do you know what happened instead?
THE VERY NEXT DAY, as if to shake me from (what I now see as) my pride, I came across a heartstopping poem by one of my favorite poets, Constantin Cavafy. It describes an old man, sitting alone in the lamplight, recalling his long-gone beloveds: “deaths in the family”, “separations”, “theatres and cafes that existed long ago."
My heart seized up. I couldn’t move. I thought of how I’d feel - and likely will feel, one day — when I’m in the old man’s shoes. What if I lost my…I don’t even want to finish this sentence.
And I realized that I haven’t accepted impermanence at all.
Or if I have, that this acceptance is as fragile as life itself. It comes, then it goes.
So I offer these thoughts, Kristien, not only for you, but also for myself.