Finitude and Chance Pt. 4

Saturday, November 23

For today, an excerpt from Mary Oliver’s “In Blackwater Woods”:

To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

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Stoics and Buddhists sometimes praise non-attachment as a virtue, and I can see its importance. But I also worry that there is a risk that we lose touch with the valuable things around us in our limited time on this earth.

I like Oliver’s middle ground: fierce, but temporary, attachment.