Receive and Release

Impermanence: the fact or quality of being temporary or short lived. This past calendar season, as well as the season of my life, has presented multiple moments for me to recognize the presence of impermanence. As a champion of change, I welcome new opportunities, new adventures, new challenges. Most kinds of novelty energize me over the predictable and familiar. I cannot speak for others, but for me, change precedes growth and renewal, even when it’s hard.

While I embrace change, I haven’t given much consideration to impermanence until lately. I’m reminded of a parenting article I read years ago when my children were young and the physical exhaustion was nonstop: “The days are long, but the years are short.” Indeed.  Just a few weeks ago, we dropped off William for his first year of college at Seattle University. This was not my first rodeo with college drop offs, and yet…impermanence gobsmacked me again, like I was born yesterday and had never experienced an ending of one thing and the beginning of another.

What do we do with this old/new friend of impermanence and its accompanying complicated emotions? I don’t know, but I’m trying to learn. I logged onto a live online yoga class the day after we returned from Seattle, feeling melancholy and fatigued from the weekend. The instructor talked about how we can receive and release during times of transition. I’ve noodled on this quite a bit. Honestly, to receive and release could be a daily practice to “get through this thing called life” in the words of Prince.

How can I simply receive and not cling, not judge, not ruminate, not despair, not worry, not react? Just receive: the person, their emotions, myself, the situation, the challenge, the present moment. That’s it and that’s all. Don’t try to fix, solve, understand, or improve. Just receive.

And then, how can I simply release whatever and however this person, this emotion, this situation, this challenge, this present moment, thisness? How can I let it be (let ME be), release and let it go? As I’ve written about previously, letting go is hard for me, because letting go feels like not caring. Which isn’t true, but it’s how it feels for me.

To receive and release feels kinder. More manageable. Applicable to most things that life serves me. That’s my practice for this season of impermanence: Receive and Release….and repeat.

At the end of the summer I observed the impermanence of nature, aware that nature’s timelines stretch longer than those of humanity. In the middle of a solo hike along the Deschutes River, I paused to rest and soak my feet in the water. At first my thoughts kept swirling about as I mindlessly gazed at the trees, sky, and riffling river. 

Eventually, I started noticing. Soaking it all in through my senses: the cold water cooling and numbing my sore feet. A warm and refreshing breeze waving across my skin. The piney air filling my lungs as my breathing slowed and deepened. The roaring rush of the rapids. 

Then, the ferny plants caught my eye. A splash of red berries peeked out amidst green, bushy foliage. As I fixed my gaze on this plant life, I realized they were growing out of a bone-gray log that had crashed into the river, who knows how many years ago, gotten wedged between the rocks, and stayed put….stuck. And, it reminded me of the saying “bloom where you’re planted.” Literally, this dead tree, its roots ripped out of its original home in the earth, had created a new home in the river. This dead log had become fertile ground for new life. New habitat for lovely, healthy plants and likely many creatures my eye couldn’t detect from my perch near the bank. 

This consciousness astounded me – the impermanence of the tree’s life, disrupted by a massive fall, its transfiguration to a log that grows new life, nourished by the water and sunlight. What a metaphor of hope for all of us who’ve battled loss and tragedy in the space of impermanence.