I was reminded by a wise friend that there is an important lesson we can learn from the leaves.  It is the time of year when many trees let them go. They release them to fall on the ground. This means the trees can grow brand new leaves in the spring. This feat of nature is repeated over and over again. In the spring new leaves sprout forth – clinging to the tree limbs and swinging from the branches all spring and summer. As the weather begins to change in the fall, it’s as if they uncurl their fingers and let go of the limb they were hanging onto. Some fall early and quickly and some linger until the first frost or a windy, rain storm forces them off.

Does it take courage for the leaves to let go and yield to the cycles to nature?  I don’t know about the leaves, but I do know about people.  Courage comes from a French word which means “heart”.  Like the leaves, in order to move from clinging to the tree to letting go, people have to “take heart”. Look into your own heart to find out your sincerest heart’s desire, the thing we yearn for most and would be willing to take a risk to achieve or acquire. Or despite that burning desire, are we clinging to the safety and security of the tree we know?  Do we need to take a leap in courage and faith?

Letting go means being brave enough to float in the air like the leaves, not knowing where we are going to land – but knowing that we will land. Taking heart to follow our dream might mean that we get blown by the wind or scooped up and raked into a pile. Kids play or a dog digging might unearth us from the pile and we are blown in the wind again. Letting go means that we accept the constant winds of change or challenge. With each puff we can either look to learn, change, and find benefit in this new pile of leaves. Or we can be fixed and see only that we have fallen off the familiar tree.  When we are willing to be open to move like the leaves in the wind, we see what we could not see before.

Many of us are attached to our past or present situations and people that are not ever going to give us our heart’s desires. Yet, we refuse to be like the leaves on the tree and let go so that we can begin a new cycle in our life. To let the old fall so that the new can be born is a cycle of nature – yet we hang on to the old, even when it is causing us to shrivel and become a cranky, dissatisfied, resentful or negative person. Ouch! This cripples us and takes away the life that might have been.

Like the leaves, let go!  Open your heart in courage to take a risk of being blown by the wind. Many blessings – that’s the dream!