The Letting Go: A Meditation on Change

Fall is here. The light is changing, that’s for sure. We’re down to just under 13 hours of daylight compared to nearly 16 at the June peak. The days are shorter, the light is softer, and the shift is undeniable. The leaves are turning, and soon they will begin to let go.

This season is always nostalgic: the start of a new school year, football, Halloween around the corner – and yes, the pumpkin spice latte at Starbucks. Fall has a mood all its own.

The iconic image of autumn, of course, is the turning of the leaves. In my backyard, the two massive bigleaf maples are shifting now, and I always feel mixed emotions watching them change. There’s sadness in the fading of long, warm days with their lingering twilight, but also joy in the beauty of what comes next. Fall carries this “happy-sad” message: what does it mean to let go? Trees have no hesitation. They strip bare, trusting spring will eventually return with new green.

If we were trees, what would we let go of now? And if we knew with absolute certainty that release would bring renewal, what would we lay down?

The leaves themselves offer a clue. Once they fall, they decompose and return to the soil, nourishing microbes and enriching the very tree that dropped them. Letting go is not loss – it’s gift. A necessary turn in the seasonal cycle.

There is no reason for the tree to cling to fading leaves. Their photosynthetic work is complete, their green energy stores exhausted. Chlorophyll breaks down, revealing the hidden yellows, oranges, and reds of carotenoid pigments. These colors were there all along, only concealed beneath the dominance of green. This, too, is part of the poetry of fall: when something fades, what was hidden becomes visible.

Letting go has that power. Release often reveals gifts we couldn’t see before. Addiction offers a stark example: when someone is trapped in alcohol or drugs, their gifts are obscured. Remove the addiction, heal the wounds, and their natural brilliance emerges.

Because I am such a fan of words, I have to include two beautiful words that belong here: senescence and abscission. Senescence is the natural process of aging, decline written into all living things. In leaves, senescence culminates in abscission, the deliberate act of release. The tree forms a specialized layer of cells at the base of each leaf, sealing itself and loosening the connection. When the moment is right, the leaf detaches. Not by accident — but by design. The tree has prepared for it, signaling the process at the molecular level. Letting go is not failure. It is biology, intention, and wisdom, encoded in the tree’s very DNA.

Buddhist tradition points us to a similar truth. Thich Nhat Hanh, my root guru, says “letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything – anger, anxiety, or possessions – we cannot be free.” These elements of anger and anxiety are signs that the ego is running the program and the constraint here is clinging. At its core, the antidote to clinging is letting go; in this case, it means letting go of the illusion of a separate self. The clinging ego holds on tight to anything that maintains that illusion. To illustrate this, the image of the wave and the ocean is often used: we imagine the wave — the separate self— as separate from the ocean. To believe otherwise is as absurd as thinking the wave could exist apart from the water itself. The illusion of a self separate from the rest of humanity or primordial consciousness is the source of this clinging and ultimately suffering. This is why the Fall season is such a perfect reminder to trust the process of the seasonal cycles and to let go of things that no longer serve us.

Monday Meditation: On a slow ten-count, reflect on this seasonal moment of letting go. What in your life is ready to fall away? Where might senescence and abscission reveal colors and gifts that have been hidden? This is a trust fall into the cycle of release. As Dory told Marlin in the whale’s mouth: “it’s time to let go, everything’s gonna be alright.” Only then do we discover the magic.