imaginary paper cranes

Learning to let things go has been one of the more difficult lessons of my time here. It's something that I had to learn more than once. Every time I found myself faced with the same anguish of loss, the echo of a cry into the winding void of a piece of the past that I can never get back, hoping something, anything would send it back my way but never will, the realization would strike me again. And again and again and again, until I'd been dogged enough of self-inflicted mortality and lashed the spite out of my heaving lungs to accept reality for how I created it. Learning to let things go has brought me freedom of mobility in the face of avarice. I've gifted myself joy and wonder, and ever the diligent student I have become as a result.

It was a disservice to myself to market stagnancy as comfortability. Clutching onto memories and plastering them onto the present has done naught but burn scars into my palms. Only two things are certain in this lifetime: 1) things change and 2) nothing stays the same. There is a secret third thing, though, and that's love. In truth, they are all one and the same. Every branching narrative and twisting fortune and misfortune is a direct route to love in some sense. That becomes more obvious with time. Allowing things to change as they do, releasing platitudes once fastened to my being has shown me that love supersedes all things, by miles, by lightyears. Across all the stars and galaxies and dimensions possible and impossible, there is love.

Through love, I have been reminded of who I am. Where the sun dips behind the waves and sprays the blue blanket splotches of tarnished velveteen, I see love. Where the ridges of concrete slabs scorch the underbellies of creeping reptiles and serve as rolling white deserts for sensory formicidae, I see love. Where the pus oozes from ruptured pores, reddened and inflamed, where the finger sets off the chain reaction of a weighted piece of blackened iron to steal the life of another, where the carrion festers bloodied and broken but a feast to the right palette, I see love.

Most importantly, I have found it within myself, through its myriad of fail-safes and countermeasures and tests designed to impede an unworthy spirit. With patience, I have become someone worthy of the conscious affection I used to seek in other human beings, unaware that those I encounter are merely reflections of my own being, forgotten echoes and facets of singularity. In understanding this, I have come to understand what is needed of me from most people I encounter, and the answer remains the same: love. In whatever way that is most appropriate, I might hurriedly deliver it. I am to heal with the love I possess, nurture fractured souls, realign broken wings and set them to fly once more. Often thanklessly, often at an inexorable cost to myself, yet I am finally equipped to handle it.

It's as if I have been trying to remember a song I used to enjoy. For the longest time, I had only a portion of the melody, a few seconds of a tune to hum, and more notes would be revealed as I stepped into new versions of myself. It is a self-composition, a masterwork both revered and dogmatically ancient. The greater portion of the medley has returned to and embedded in my memory, affixed at a foundational level and barring access to any such audacious malady that trespasses against my understanding of this existence. Any potential theft of joy, of love, is eviscerated on identification. I am both judge and jury, rightfully so. This body, this experience, this reality. All projections of a collective consciousness. An experiment of sorts. One I ordained and agreed to participate in long ago, before memory was conceptualized.

Learning to let things go has effectively reintroduced to me my own divinity. This body, my last address. And this mind, a cradling incubation chamber of my own design. To what end, I've not allowed myself to know, but what I do know is that there is peace in love. And to exist is to love, chasing, catching, releasing, and chasing again.

I do not pretend to know everything. In fact, I would vehemently argue that I know very little. As there is power in knowledge, there is as much in recognizing that some such learnings are beyond the capacity of human imagination. There are, for example, more than a billion ways to fold a sheet of paper into a crane and have it carry itself some distance upon a wind current. I do not know of a single method, yet that does not stop me from marveling at the craftsmanship when I encounter someone who does. Life is not about having it 'all figured out.' Life is about living and exploring the love to be investigated and propagated here.

At least it is for me. And if in the end I come to discover I have been incorrect in expounding my purpose, if I am to face penalty and penitence for transgressions ignorantly withstood, I will then be grateful that the life I did lead granted me calm solace in the face of infinite uncertainty. Through all things, I crafted an intimate understanding of earthly contentment through compassion and geniality, and I would hold my hand to the fire and thank all the stars in the sky for the absence of cold.