An inn, and a traveler

The person you can't let go of may have simply been walking the same road for a while.

School, a job, a flat, a shared office. You saw each other every day for years and then, without a decision being made by anyone, you didn't.

In 1082 Su Shi was living in exile in Huangzhou. One night he came home late, drunk, and stood at the door of his own house. Everyone inside was asleep, and nobody answered.

So he leaned on his staff and listened to the river.

He wrote a poem. Halfway through: I keep resenting that this body isn't mine to keep, when will I stop all this striving. Then the last line, which is the one people in China still quote at each other at airports.

Life is an inn. And I'm a traveler too.

The thing about that line is who it's about. He didn't write it to the friends who'd left him. He wrote it about himself, from inside his own exile, in a borrowed house, at the door he couldn't get into.

The people who leave early aren't sending you a message. They were on the road too. So were you. So are you now.

MOJOWAY is for sitting with that without making it a failure. Recognizing yourself as someone passing through is not the same as belonging to nobody, and knowing the difference takes practice.