actually good luck

Last week, my mala beads caught on the door handle to my office. I didn't realize it until the string was snapping, until the beads burst onto the carpet. Like a vampire in an old myth, I was compelled to kneel down and collect every one I could see off the floor.

As I did so, I started to berate myself. I told myself that I was a bad buddhist, that I should give up my attachment to the beads (which I've worn every day for six years - they were a gift from a friend who spent some time in India), that after all didn't I hear that beads breaking was actually good luck.

And then, I let it go. Not the attachment, but the guilt over it.

I'm still sad, of course, that the beads are gone, but this is the way life is, after all: transitory. Mala beads will not last. This blog will not last. I will not last. And that's okay. That is how it should be.

a photo by my dear friend katie, on the occasion of my 20^th birthday,
featuring my then-new mala beads