Let go, like the trees letting go of their leaves all around us.

I like this image, this suggestion. For one thing, I love the beauty of autumn. I could gorge on the sight of autumn leaves all day. Those on the trees, those blanketing the ground all around my feet. It never gets old, never gets boring.

I like the idea of shedding what no longer serves us, allowing it to float down to the ground, recognizing its beauty, while also releasing it. Trusting that it has served us well, that even the act of releasing it is serving us, will nurture our future selves. And in the releasing, making space for new growth, for what comes next.

We are so often scared of letting go, of releasing what no longer serves us. We cling to things long after their best-before date. Relationships, jobs, identities, we gather them round us, believing we are fortifying ourselves, when in reality we may be clutching nothing but armfuls of dead leaves. How much more satisfying to release them, throw them into the air and watch them settle around our feet as we shuffle through them, towards new growth, new, green buds. I suppose it is just that it takes faith. So often, when we release the old, we cannot see the new growth. It is there, inside us, but perhaps dormant for the moment. We know, we believe, the tree that loses its leaves in autumn will surely sport new, lively growth come spring. Yet we have a hard time extending that faith, that grace, to ourselves. We sometimes cannot trust that the winter season is serving us at all, so we get desperate, clutching onto the old dead, rotting leaves.

I’ve been thinking lately about holding things lightly, in the palms of open hands. I think that applies here. There was a time I turned my nose up at the idea of hot yoga, now I love it. I believed I wanted a house with a yard, yet am so much happier in a tiny one bedroom apartment. These things we think we know, they can change. They must change if we are to go on living. Staying curious, allowing the new to develop, allowing desires to change, releasing old beliefs to make way for new…surely that is what it means to be alive.