I haven’t come here to settle down, said Yunus Emre in this poem. I’ve come here to depart. Most of us, though, live in a different way, seeking every method possible to settle down, to settle in, to make a stable, permanent, predictable life – always assuming, of course, that it is a life adjusted to our own comfort and satisfaction.

And yet we also know that no amount of stability can erase the inevitable departure we all face, the only truly predictable aspect of our existence, (the timing of which, paradoxically we can never know in advance). Thinking of the story told by Hazrat Inayat Khan in this post, our clinging to names and forms makes liars out of us, for we can never really be what we claim.

What is the alternative? Yunus Emre counsels us not to think about arriving but about departing, and to not make problems, but to love. If we could learn to have a heart in which to hold the Friend, then, like Yunus the nightingale, we could be happy flying about in the Teacher’s garden and die singing. Could there be any better way to depart?