ABANDONMENT

"Morning Star", oil, by V...Vaughn

         It’s interesting that the word “abandon” originally meant simply giving up trying to control a situation or a person, a definition that doesn’t necessarily give the gloomy feeling the word usually brings these days. For instance, I could easily take pleasure in abandoning myself now and then, just giving myself up to the whims that waft through my life moment by moment. I’m so accustomed to keeping complete control of my life that it would be wonderful, now and again, to get free of self-imposed restraints and just loosen up and let go. I wish my friends could occasionally say, “Ham’s so fortunate to be able to abandon himself and be free now and then!” Surely the small, spindly, defenseless, and always anxious “self” I have been bravely protecting all these 71 years deserves to be abandoned, just as I would abandon a ship with no sails and lots of leaks. This strange sense that I am a separate, struggling entity in a world of separate, struggling entities needs to be renounced, disavowed, and discarded – abandoned as fast as I would walk out on a project that promised nothing but disappointment. I need to live with a little (perhaps a lot ) more abandon, just trusting this single, startling universe to take me where it will. Stars shine in limitless and always surprising ways, and I should allow myself to do the same.