Nothing Gold Can Stay

Accepting the inevitability of loss produces a richer, deeper form of happiness

The greens and golds of “Springtime,” by the landscape painter Paul Evans, whose art we’re featuring today.

Instead of starting your week with deadlines and stress, how about a lovely poem from Robert Frost, on the inevitability of loss and change:

Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

“Dollops Wood,” by Paul Evans

This poem seems, at first, to have a hopeless tone.

But I find, again and again, that accepting the inevitability of loss and change unlocks a richer, deeper form of happiness: a savoring of the present, and a willingness to find and embrace future gains.

(This is really what my book, BITTERSWEET, was all about. And I’m considering these themes all over again now, as my husband Ken and I find ourselves months away from an “empty nest”. Right now I feel pretty calm and optimistic about this change - I’ll let you know what it’s actually like, in September!)

This is not to say that life doesn’t throw us catastrophic losses whose arrival we must mourn. But life does reconstitute itself, continually, in new forms; and the challenge is to open ourselves to these new forms - even when we don’t welcome them.

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You know I always love to hear from you:

• What in your life feels “golden” (and perhaps fleeting) right now — and are you savoring it fully, while it’s still here?

• What “new form” might life be asking you to welcome, even if you didn’t choose it?

• What has “not stayed” in your life—and what did its passing teach you?

Please do share!