The Lesson of the Motorcycle

"When our attitude towards our material possessions and wealth is not proper, it can lead to an extreme attachment towards such things as our property, houses and belongings. This can lead to an inability to feel contented. If that happens, then one will always remain in a state of dissatisfaction, always wanting more. In a way, one is then really poor, because the suffering of poverty is the suffering of wanting something and feeling the lack of it."

The Dalai Lama

The motorcycle is really just a symbol for my attachments to things that are no longer serving the needs in my life. As if the “motorcycle” is me and if it is gone I will be not whole any more or even exist. I seem to be an entity based on my material possessions or abilities. What a great lesson this has become in letting go yet again, grieving the loss and finding that I am still in tact.

I am also letting go of a portion of my profession of 25 years that has served me well but has become physically challenging. Again I hold on to it as if it would bring my demise to let go. I tell myself when one door closes another always opens. Or so it has always been for me. But yet I don’t trust what 54 years has proved to be true as well as every supportive person in my life has attested to. Not to mention the wisdom of great thinkers.

In my mind change always equals loss and suffering as if permanence provides security and impermanence doesn’t. When paradoxically the only thing that remains the same is change. Everything is really in flux. Life, the dance of transient form and soon enough just dust and ashes. "Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal." Arthur Schopenhauer

Today my mission if I can accept it is to find joy the moment that is now and glean from it the lesson of impermanence. And maybe in my journey I can incorporate compassion for all beings. Surly not a mission impossible.