How to get really good at going on a journey

Dear Reader,

When I said I would send out posts on Friday, I forgot today was the day after Thanksgiving. It is wonderful to start with gratitude. I am grateful for many things, but I’m especially grateful for family. For the smell of chocolate that fills the house, the result of an afternoon helping my younger son bake a birthday cake for his older brother. I want to keep a snapshot of this moment in my wallet: the boys here for the holiday, and the green of the young olive tree silhouetted against the bright pink-yellow-orange leaves of the persimmon trees. All of it - the people together in the house, the branches of the persimmon trees still heavy with fruit, the steady fall of leaves which then cover large parts of the grass as though they are confetti in the aftermath of a glorious party, and even the squirrel hanging upside down to eat the fruit near the top of the tree- make up a moment of arrival, of having climbed some significant part of a really large mountain. I want to carry this moment forever in my heart, to remind myself that I too was here and partook in the sweetness of life. That I tasted its warm, honeyed, round taste even as time slid stickily through my fingers.

The sun arrives and sets the leaves ablaze with joy.

Reader, what moment do you carry around in your wallet?

“kairosclerosis n. the moment you realize that you’re currently happy—consciously trying to savor the feeling—which prompts your intellect to identify it, pick it apart and put it in context, where it will slowly dissolve until it’s little more than an aftertaste.”
― John Koenig, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Kairosclerosis sounds like the perfect word for the melancholy of departing even as we arrive.

A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

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Today’s moment of arrival reminds me of departure, the inevitable flip side. For years, I’ve had a problem leaving home. I’m more or less okay the next day, but the moment of separation- from home, from family- brings up a terror of somehow being permanently lost in transit, as though I am a package without an address, destined to never reach or return home. (If I were to coin a word for this debilitating fear, I imagine it would have to end with -ma, have at least two r’s, and sound as anguished as a wolf’s howl.) This is a particularly pernicious kind of fear. Because how do you start a journey if you are unable to leave? Maybe I’m really asking how does one live if one is afraid of life?

“It is said that before entering the sea
a river trembles with fear.

She looks back at the path she has traveled,
from the peaks of the mountains,
the long winding road crossing forests and villages.

And in front of her,
she sees an ocean so vast,
that to enter
there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.

But there is no other way.
The river can not go back.

Nobody can go back.
To go back is impossible in existence.

The river needs to take the risk
of entering the ocean
because only then will fear disappear,
because that’s where the river will know
it’s not about disappearing into the ocean,
but of becoming the ocean.”

―Osho, Beyond Enlightenment

I guess you get really good at going on a journey by practicing.

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Dear Reader, I am very grateful for your company on this writing journey.

What moments do you carry in your wallet?

What part of the journey are you most afraid of?

Any suggestions for naming the debilitating fear? (Remember it would have to end with -ma, have at least two r’s, and sound as anguished as a wolf’s howl.)

I’d love to hear from you!

Best,

Priya

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