A tale of beauty and loss
It's Spring here. Being obsessed with flowers, naturally, this is my favourite time of the year (along with autumn).
There’s nothing like aligning to nature’s song to bring freshness, change, and lightness into our existence.
I have loved switching the background images in my tech devices, deleting apps I don't use, removing subscriptions to things I’m no longer interested in, unsubscribing from newsletters I don’t read, unfollowing accounts that don’t feel nourishing, and making SPACE in every possible way.
As you might know, before leaving London I donated/gifted/sold about 50 - 75% of my things and it felt, oh so liberating (even despite those moments where I would wake up at 3am thinking I absolutely could NOT donate that Macrobiotic cookbook).
Fortunately my approach to owning things has changed radically over the course of my life.
I remember being 18 and moving to Paris with two overweight suitcases and bursting-at-the-seams carry on luggage. Fast forward to me revelling at throwing away fully squeezed tubes of Aesop body cream, and traveling with just a carry on suitcase (yes, even on long trips).
I mutated from being someone that low-key hoarded things in fear (including Hello Kitty stickers as a 6 year old) to trusting I’ll be ok without packing a dress and a pair of heels “just in case” - which I guess also mirrors how trust in myself and in life has grown (as I often tell my clients: how we do anything is how we do everything).
I now believe that we should never own something we’d be terrified of losing (‘cos otherwise do you own it, or does it own you?). Use it, get it dirty, chip it because you used it in that party, scribble on the margins, accidentally pour coffee over it, let your sister borrow it - be ok with the fact it might not make it back.
Life is too short to stress over stuff. Stuff isn’t the point of this game.
At best we are temporary custodians, rather than permanent owners, of anything. Hell, we're not even permanent ourselves.
Don't get me wrong, I’m a recovering detail-oriented perfectionist with now-latent OCD tendencies and thus advocate for looking after your things to the best of your abilities (fun fact: I don't like shopping so I really try to make the most out of every item in my life). But not being so precious about things that if you were to lend it to a friend and it got lost it would also mean the end of that relationship.
I now trust loss. Even when it hurts. Even when I lost the material item I mosttreasured.
After months of stinging, I saw it as a massive teacher in letting go of attachments to physical objects, and freedom swooshed in. Insert the beginning of this song.
As I look out the window I can see rows of cherry blossoms in full bloom. And the entire country is losing its mind about it, which I 10000% approve of.
Every pink cloud of sakura seems to be surrounded by a swarm of influencers, boyfriends taking photos of their kimono-wrapped SO, along with every other human pulled into the gravity of their beauty.
In Japan, the ancient tradition of enjoying the beautiful but ephemeral blossoms of cherry trees is called hanami.
Why do people freak out over cherry blossoms? Because they are in bloom for only a couple of weeks.
It is the knowing of how transient they are that makes the appreciation all the more intense. The same applies to life of course, the more aware we are of death the more urgent living becomes.
The school of life beckons us to learn to fully inhabit this moment, without gripping, not despite it knowing it will end but because it will end.
Enjoy your spring cleaning beloved Jeanine, even when things/people/situations that you wouldn't have chosen to let go of are being released.
Trust the process.
In full bloom,
Jeanine xx