The glass is already broken, and that is why I enjoy it

Fear of loss rarely comes from the loss itself. It comes from a quiet assumption underneath it: that the thing will stay. Give up that assumption first, book the thing as already gone, and there is nothing left to defend. What remains is what is in front of you. Ajahn Chah made this concrete with a glass. He drank from it, enjoyed how it caught the light, and considered it already broken. So when the wind knocked it over, his answer was “of course”. The breaking was priced in from the start, which made every moment with the glass a gain rather than a postponement. The Stoics arrived at the same place from another direction. Premeditatio malorum, and Seneca treating everything he owned as on loan. Two things this is easy to mistake for. It reads like pessimism, until you notice the conclusion is presence: you still drink from the glass. It reads like permission to be careless, until you notice you still keep the glass away from the edge of the table. That is the boundary. It works for…