In Fading Light

on learning to let go

Welcome to Slow Folk - a community for gentle hearts and rebellious creatives, thirsty for a slower life in a world obsessed with speed.

Welcome to the Unbusy Revolution.

We are coming to the end of another strange and wonderful and difficult year and I am, in a word, weary.

I feel it all around me.

Do you feel it, too?

Winter on the farm is the pause at the top of a breath; the smell of woodsmoke in the kitchen, animals tucked up tight in the barn, the things of summer mercifully reassigned to that perennial list ever titled - next year.

It is the faintest of pauses, corresponding not to the calendar or day-length but to that sliver of darkest nights between reaping and sowing. It is hallowed, precious time.

Maybe that’s why I resist the pull towards too-much that envelops us all during the season. This shard of darkness, of quiet stillness, is too fleeting, too fragile. I grip it tight, even knowing it will pierce my skin.

Why do we do that? Why do we hold on so damn tight?

They say that we will be given the same lessons again and again until we learn.

I wonder if that’s true? Or is it simply that some lessons can only be learned in the doing - over and over again - until they become automatic, our muscles imbued with memory?

Mine, it seems, is to open my hands.

He says - Open your hands if you want to be held.

I open them - my career.

I open them - my mother.

I open them - this life I thought I was building.

Over and over and over.

There is beauty in there somewhere, I’m sure.

I’ll find it. It’s what I do.

Every year around this time when the weather grows cold, the songbirds seek refuge from the wind on the porch of our farmhouse. Once in, they find themselves trapped by invisible borders, lines drawn beyond their reckoning.

I patiently catch their soft and yielding bodies, carry them, tiny hearts racing, to the doorway. I open my hands and watch them fly.

I dream of her sometimes. In the dream, I forget that she is gone. There’s always an unremarkable cup of tea at her tidy kitchen table, the usual bickering, the same-old family gossip.

I awake. I open my hands.

Try not to resist the changes that come your way. Instead, let life live through you. And do not worry that your life is turning upside down. How do you know that the side you are used to is better than the one to come? - Rumi

Open your hands. Open your hands. Open your hands.

Maybe, if I keep saying it, keep unclenching my fists, I’ll learn.

Maybe, with enough practice, the muscles will relax, the tendons release their tension, the reflex will wane.

Maybe.

Or maybe this is what it means to let life live through you. Maybe this conscious unclenching IS the way. Maybe it’s the only way.

Maybe this act of mindfully letting go is the difference between rowing and sailing through our lives. A simultaneous act of courageous surrender and defiant harnessing of wind and wave.

I let go, knowing that I will always re-clench that fist. That I will always be asked to open my hand, just one more time. Knowing that it will hurt like hell and that it is also the only way out and through.

We don’t get to choose. And you know, I wonder, if maybe that’s for the best.

We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happened better than all the riches or power in the world.

- Mary Oliver, Don’t Hesitate

In the meantime, there are these rare and fleeting nights to cling to, this liminal space between the reaping and the sowing, where there is waiting and there is breath.

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Stacey Langford is a writer, renegade farmer and slow business mentor living and working in Canada’s Fraser Valley. In 2010 Stacey ditched her cubicle in the city to turn her attention homeward, farm and help others craft a simple life, from scratch.

Are you ready to build a life - and a living - you actually love?

I help rebellious solopreneurs and creatives build businesses rooted in Slow Values. If you’re ready to step into your own Slow Life and finally claim your calling, let’s chat!