The art is not one of forgetting but letting go. And when everything else is gone, you can be rich in loss.

Fear of making mistakes can itself become a huge mistake, one that prevents you from living, for life is risky and anything less is already loss.

The word "lost" comes from the Old Norse "los," meaning the disbanding of an army, and this origin suggests soldiers falling out of formation to go home, a truce with the wide world. I worry now that many people never disband their armies, never go beyond what they know.

If sorrow and beauty are all tied up together, then perhaps maturity brings with it not what Nabhan calls abstraction, but an aesthetic sense that partially redeems the losses time brings and finds beauty in the faraway.