When you are unattached, it’s not that you don’t care. You do care. You just don’t mind.

It’s not that you are indifferent. It is that you are not attached. You would prefer this or that, yet your happiness in life is not dependent upon it. You have become more independent, and independent means you are more free.

You have become an adult in that you have taken responsibility for your place in the world. You are no longer a cog to yourself. You are a smooth-running gear.

You do not become stuck. You may be determined and dedicated, yet you are not stuck to a certain idea as if, without it, the sky would fall. You become a traveler who goes up hill and down dale. It is not a big deal. Just as a traveler does not decide that the hills and dales must be arranged in a certain way, so do you take life as it comes. Even if you were given a certain map to follow, and it turns out to be inaccurate, you walk the hills and dales that are before you. You do not complain. You do not aggravate. You go up and down according to the terrain. The lay of the land does not have to be as you thought it should be. The lay of the land does not have to determine how much happiness you allow yourself.

You encourage life, and yet you do not resist when it takes another direction. You are not weak-willed. It is just that you are open to change. You endeavor, and yet you let life be. And you let people be. And so you come to love life and the adventure of it more than ever before.

You want a letter to arrive. You are happy when it comes. If it does not come, you are not distraught. Nothing has happened but that the letter you wanted hasn’t arrived, hasn’t arrived yet, will arrive in due time or will not arrive at all. It is only a letter. It is not the meaning of your life.

It is like this. Your son is a basketball player. You cheer your son from the bleachers. You want him to win. Whether he is the star that night or he fumbles, he is still your son. Your love for him is not dependent upon his winning. He didn’t have to be the star player in order for you to love him. How important is the game really? What difference does winning or losing really make? What is at stake that would control your happiness? Your son means more than the game. Love does not have to go up and down according to events, nor do you.

The one who is able to let go loves life more. He simply loves more because he has allowed himself the freedom to do so. Unattached, he is free to love. He loves because he loves. He doesn’t save love for certain qualified circumstances. He loves because he has not tied himself to his ideas of what life should be. He does not make life conform to his vision. He does not make himself conform either. He is a free-wheeling being. He makes life easy, not hard. He does not whip life into shape. He does not try to make it rain nor does he try to stop it from raining. In rain or in shine, he goes along the same. He gives rain and sun permission to be what they are when they are, and he gives himself permission to smile anyway.