A reflection on goodbyes
These words from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar were what I chose for my high school graduation quote many moons ago. As a military brat, I’ve had my fair share of goodbyes over the years, which has continued into adulthood—from schools to cities to homes to jobs to family, friends, boyfriends, etc. And despite all of the many opportunities, never have I quite mastered the art of the farewell.
2020 has certainly brought up for all of us this notion of goodbye—to our routines and habits, to our ways of life and interactions with others, to our sense of safety and security. We find ourselves missing the normalcy of everyday living. Many of us, myself included, have seen the end of a relationship or employment (or both); some of us have lost loved ones.
Everything in life has this final punctuation of a farewell; there is an inevitable “death” to all situations—be it an experience, a partnership, even life itself. How we relate to this finality can and does profoundly impact how we ultimately relate to the world and to those around us.
We know this intellectually—that life is brief and finite. Yet often we still choose to misspend our energy, misuse our time, misdirect our attention. We focus on what we don’t have versus what we do have, on what we “should be” doing versus what we want to be doing, on protecting ourselves from vulnerability versus connecting with others through vulnerability. And on and on.
How can we become aware of how we’re using our energy, our time, our attention? How can we break free from our thoughts and emotions? How can we redirect these uses towards that which matters most?
We sit.
And as we sit, learning to be in our body and with our breath, we practice being conscious. We practice relaxing, even into our struggles or heartaches or uncertainties. We practice understanding the human condition, our shared hopes and even shared sorrows. We learn to realize that life is a series of moments, big and small—that we never get them back and we don’t know how many we have, so we might as well enjoy them as they come.
It is the very inevitability of goodbye, of farewell, of death that actually can open us up to the preciousness and beauty of life itself, in all of its profound and mundane moments alike.
And then, when we must say adieu, as we will, we can better learn the art of the farewell, to smile even through the sadness. We can find peace, whether the goodbye is forever or just for now. Either way, we can relish in the laughter, the light, the love that was.
How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.
A.A. Milne
