Holding On

Today, after tutoring a Chinese student, I started thinking about expressions we take for granted, those cliches so embedded in our language that we use them without thought.

Like holding on.

We hold on to ideas, habits, beliefs, behaviors, memories, things -- whether good or bad or indifferent to and for us.  We hold on to detritus (old documents and files), each other's hands (in joy and fear), an interpretation of the past (the Lost Cause), or hopes and plans for the future (America, the land of equal opportunity).

Climbing down to Bridal Veil Falls yesterday, I held on to my borrowed hiking stick, and once there I held on to a tree at the edge of a long drop (thinking of my deceased sister-in-law who fell to her death).  
 

The day before, at the forestry cabin pond, Autumn Meadowhawks and Eastern Pondhawks held on to flight and procreation despite the lateness of the season and a single lady beetle held on to the slim stem of a weed, tossed about by what for the beetle must have been a hurricane.

Even in dying, my friend Charley held on to joy in living, laughing, reminiscing, commenting on contemporary politics whose results he knew he would not see.

Holding on is more than an idiom: it's a way of being.