There’s so much rain lately in our part of the world. For us fire energies seem a bit too much, a bit too watery. It’s hard to not loosen up. You eventually surrender to the flow. It’s quite cleansing after you do. It’s supposed to be in nature anyway.

After Remembrance Day, and some situations and processes that I was going through lately, this water brought up some memories. It enlightened a new perspective and a new pattern of connecting dots on my path.

These nature’s tears reminded me of so many of my tears in the past. Either goodbyes to people, or previous versions of me and when going into the new and unknown, or to dreams, hopes, and expectations that I’ve had for myself at certain times and when creating new ones, or to experiences with emotions and beliefs that I needed to transform into a lesson to learn from to move on.

I’ve done some thinking lately on ‘I live today as it was my last day’, and I’m seeing and experiencing it now from a new perspective. Two major shifts occurred for me. First, how is it, to live it as if it would be the last day, and second, that this concept includes goodbyes? I know it rationally, but when it’s there, it’s still not always easy. There is some resistance, fear, a need to control or at least manage… about a goodbye. It’s the thinking and expectation behind and around it.

I recall one memory with my nephew when he was about 4 or 5 years old, that taught me about the distinction between doing things today or tomorrow. To extend our time together and playtime that day, my nephew wanted to go to another playground after he had been playing already for several hours. Like his perfect aunty I usually surrendered, but that day it was already late. I said to him that we can do that tomorrow, that now we need to go home. And he started crying, ‘No, let’s go today, what is tomorrow, tomorrow is nothing, tomorrow is pointless.’ He made me think. Tomorrow could be nothing, pointless. We went home anyway, but I recalled the wisdom he shared with me often since that day.

While watching a movie yesterday, I received a text message from someone I had to say goodbye to around 15 years ago. We needed quite some time after ‘saying goodbye’ to continue our separate ways. He told me a few years later about the lyrics of one song that reminded him of me saying the final goodbye, ‘…she threw one life into the river and went into another world…’. And at first, I reacted that he threw it away not me, because the cause for us to separate was on his side. But eventually, I admitted to myself that it was true. It was me who needed so long to let go of the dreams and hopes and visions and expectations that I had for myself and with him, and to align with reality. And when I finally did, I did it like a clean slate. Like I’d start again, a new me building my new life from scratch.

My dad used to say, after fully recovering from lung cancer, that since then, his every day is a gift, and he has been living this way last 15 years of his life. When he suddenly passed away, it was a quite profound experience for me to find him and to face the death of someone so dear and close to me for the first time. It was also an interesting experience than calling everyone to tell them that he passed away when I needed to repeat several times that he’s gone, that he’s not with us anymore, that it’s true. It was hard to believe for everyone, because he was so present, and it was so unexpected. However, it was a clear goodbye in this form of being, with no words to prepare us for, and no words needed to understand it. It has already happened. There was nothing to change this fact.

One speaker at my dad’s funeral said that death (and pain) is the experience of being alive. It’s us thinking about what we’ve lost, are losing, or will lose, that makes it difficult. It’s the same I think with our figurative deaths – not just big ones, like saying goodbye to people in romantic and professional relationships, to our youth and vitality, etc., but also smaller, daily ones – to say goodbye to our expectations, beliefs, feelings that don’t support us. We usually make the latter stay longer because they seem less serious, and less painful.

My nephew is 18 now, and he learned by now to twist his child’s wisdom, like we adults more or less do. He’s now quite fond of today, or if it could be possible already yesterday, when it’s something he wants, and he prefers ‘sometime after tomorrow’ when he doesn’t.

There are many situations and goodbyes that are sudden and unexpected and many that are preparing us for a long time to come. It’s hard to say that one way is harder or easier than the other. It’s life. It teaches us what we need to learn on our path. It’s how we perceive life, days, goodbyes, and our role in them, that makes the difference. Live today as if it would be your last. Make it a good one.