Everything Worth Loving Is Worth Losing

Trying to hold on destroys every beautiful thing.

I want this to last forever.

We’ve all said it. Those rare moments when the light of the universe floods in. When the world calls your name. That first kiss. The promotion you worked years for. The first time you see your name in print. The unexpectedly delicious meal in the company of laughing friends, when the wine makes you merry but not yet drunk.

If I could just hold on to this moment, you think. You know that you can’t. But human desires never consider what’s possible. If they did, the moon would be clean and barren and empty of footprints.

It’s impossible. But it’s worse than just that. Trying to hold on to what you love is the surest way to lose it.

There was a king in Babylon, black-eyed and fierce.

His square-cut beard glistened with perfumed oils. His fat fingers sparkled with rings.

His father was king. His grandfather was king. Now it was his time. Time to sit on the high throne carved in the shape of a great bronze bull. Time for trumpets to blare and shake the air, announcing the presence of royalty.

The king was born in a palace. Everyone born in a palace has the same problem. Free of everything but desire, he didn’t want to be king. He wanted more. He wanted to be a god.

When it rains, I think of the dead.

The earth above them acts like a roof to keep the rain off. But the water makes its way down eventually. With eyes closed, you can imagine hearing its dim drumming on the domed earth above. A portion of the outside world reaching you even underground. It’s the loveliest sound the dead hear.

Most birds won’t fly in the rain. Eagles are too proud to wet their feathers. Crows are smart enough to outlast bad weather. But the tiny hummingbird can’t afford to wait. Its supercharged metabolic rate demands a constant supply of high-energy food. With wings blurred by speed, they hang like wasps around my feeder, dipping long slender beaks into fake plastic flowers to taste the sweetness inside.

Great Babylon was lousy with priests.

On feast days, their arcane mumbling filled the scented courtyards. The smoke of their sacrifices darkened the bronzed sun. And the high priest refused to proclaim his king a god. Kings come and go, the high priest said. The gods are forever.

The king’s eyes darkened. But without a word, he nodded at the priest’s decision. Then, he built a garden. A splendid garden with plants that flowered night and day, under the sun and under the moon. The ever-changing fragrance filled the courtyards of the palace, and the king smiled.

Hummingbirds buzzed in the garden. Swarming like ants, they danced from one flower to another, cooling the air with their wings. Soon, strange species of birds appeared, birds no one had seen before. Black hummingbirds with razor-sharp beaks. Birds with huge eyes and membranous wings that only flew at night. Birds that shrieked and screamed and battled in the vibrating air above the garden of the king.

Swarms of these strange birds came to the garden, to the delight and wonder of the city. No one noticed that for all the birds that flew into the garden, not one ever flew out.

I know about rain.

The English language has a dozen or so words for it, like Inuit snow or Arab sand. Drizzle. Sleet. Pissing it down. Liquid sunshine. I grew like a weed under gray clouds like this, and when I moved across the world, it was to a cool green rainforest.

One day, I will see my last rain shower. The last time I’ll feel that quicksilver coolness on my skin and listen to the sad sigh of falling water. But I probably won’t know it.

Hold out your hand. Let the rain fill up the hollow of your palm. The same way it fills the lakes and rivers and graveyards on its way to the sea. Water is incompressible. The tighter you close your fist, the quicker it escapes. The fastest way to lose it is to try to hold onto it.

To a hummingbird, whose heart beats a hundred times a second, a minute passes like a year.

The cruel king didn’t want to simply kill his enemies. That wasn’t enough. He wanted them to feel the agony of death forever.

So he snared the birds and made poison from their broken bodies. When it was ready, he had the high priest and his followers rounded up. The poison was forced down their throats, and the executioners began to slaughter the prisoners. The king’s only regret, as the blood began to flow, was that for him, the execution would be over too soon.

And in the next instant, the king gasped at the feel of a sword lodged in his own chest. With a strangled cry, he toppled from his throne. As his eyes glazed over, he heard the buzz of a single hummingbird’s wings.

He’s still hearing them.

The rain kept singing.

Sitting under an umbrella in the dripping garden, I watched a hummingbird zip full-bellied from the feeder to the shade of a lilac bush. Between the broad leaves, she hovered, dodging the falling raindrops. We are never more alive than when we hang beneath those argent blows. The joy comes from knowing each one might be the last.

Sooner or later, we’ll lose it all anyway. You know that. The faint laughter you can sometimes hear between the drops, the gentle flutter of invisible wings.

The great joys in life, the rare and perfect pleasures, are lost to us the moment we try to hold onto them. Photographs of the sea are always vaguely disappointing. It’s the act of grasping, the closing of a fist around a delicate, beautiful, fluttering thing, that ensures its destruction.

Time is subjective, and many potions exist to speed or slow its passage. Movement. Meditation. Music. Wine. The laughter of friends under the patio lights of summer, and the warmth of a loved one’s hand in yours.

But everything worth having melts away the moment you reach out your hand to seize it.