I feel like if we are put on this earth to learn hard lessons—I don’t know about you but I sure feel that’s why I am put on this earth ;)—then the lesson I feel I am here to learn is to let go of all attachments, to places, people, things. By nature I tend to get attached to the familiar. If I live in a place long enough, be around a person long enough, have a thing long enough, I get attached. Of course there has to be some substance to it or I won’t get attached in the first place. But once I am, I find it very hard to let go. Even when logically I might know it’s not worth holding onto or that I might have a better place/thing in its place. I don’t feel that way about people. People to my mind are essentially irreplaceable. But there are times where perhaps it is best to let go of them too. It seems to me that I am always put in this position of having to let go because it comes so hard to me. I might like a space a lot and then suddenly for some reason I am expected to give it up. I might like having a person around me and then suddenly they are pulled somewhere else. The more I learn these lessons, the more wary I get of developing attachments. That seems like a way to solve the problem or never experience the lesson. But that’s another problem rather than a solution I guess! Yet I am not sure how to have tentative type of attachments where you hold something dear and yet are okay with letting go of it… I don’t hold anything dear too easily unlike those who do tentative attachments so there is a fundamental difference. But the world at least the way it is today seems more suitable for the tentative types. Nothing is expected to last or stay forever and you just go with the flow. Recently someone said they were like a butterfly and I thought of what I would compare myself to… an oak or banyan tree came to mind! J