08.09.2026 Diary VIII Following a leaf

08.09.2026 Diary Page VIII

Falling is also a movement.

Today while walking a leaf fell.

Writing this, I notice how ordinary it looks. September, trees, leaves. Something that happens every year. Something nobody stops to look at, and nobody needs to.

But I stopped.

Actually I had no intention of stopping. My mind was elsewhere as usual: a job I had to finish tomorrow, two messages I had not answered, what we would eat tonight, that piece I could never manage to start. Tabs open all at once in my head. Then a leaf passed before my eyes and all the tabs went quiet for a moment.

It was falling very slowly. To the right, to the left, a little upward, then down again. As if it was falling not to reach the ground but to stay in the air a little longer.

In my first piece I had written that I like being able to stop in front of a tree. That it does not happen while running. Today, even if unintentionally, I stopped. And because I stopped, I saw something.

The leaf does not decide

When you look at a leaf falling you cannot help looking for a meaning. I looked too. The first thing that came to my mind was this: the leaf does not decide to fall.

It does not wake up one morning and say "my time to go has come." The tree does not push it either. The place where it holds on slowly loosens. While the tree prepares for winter it cuts off the water going to it, the bond weakens, and with a wind, or maybe without any wind at all, the leaf lets go.

Letting go is not a decision, it is a process.

Reading this it sounds like a very beautiful sentence, but there is an uncomfortable side to it for me. Because I always took letting go to be a decision. That one day I would sit down and say "okay, I will not carry this anymore," and then really not carry it. Then that day never came. Or it came, I made the decision, and the next morning I found the same thing on my back again.

Maybe I was looking from the wrong place.

Maybe I do not need to decide to let go of what I cannot let go of. I need to stop carrying water to it.

My leaves

On the way home I thought about my own leaves.

Some of what I carry is truly mine. The jobs I love, the subjects I am curious about, writing, reading, that strange excitement of building something from scratch. These are like the branch itself.

But some of it is things that have stuck to me over the years.

The idea that I have to keep up with everything. The fear that if I say I am tired I will look weak. The feeling that if I leave a job half done it is not the job but I who will be left half done. The sentence "if everyone can do it, you can too." The diminishing that comes right after when I tell my success: "actually it's not that big a deal."

And there are the old explanations.

I received the diagnosis at 23. Most of the sentences I built about myself in the years before were perhaps not wrong but they were incomplete. I'm messy. I'm lazy. I can't focus because I don't want it enough. I leave it to the last night because I'm irresponsible.

The diagnosis did not erase these sentences overnight. But it cut off the water going to them.

Today, looking at that leaf, I thought about this: my old explanations are still on my branch. Their color has changed, they have dried, their bond has weakened, but they are still there. Sometimes when I make a mistake, forget something, arrive late to a meeting, they seem to turn green right away. "See, you did it again."

But they no longer hold on as tight as before. Even noticing this tells me something.

The wronged side of autumn

Autumn is always told with a bit of sadness. An ending, fading, the end of things.

Yet the tree does not die. It prepares.

The tree that lets go of its leaves becomes light in order to get through winter. If it tried to carry what it cannot carry, winter would tire it more. Every leaf it lets go of is a part of the strength it needs to start something again in spring.

When I tried to apply this to myself I noticed I was struggling. Because I always saw becoming lighter as loss. Leaving a job, handing over a responsibility, saying "I can't do this right now"... All of them feel a bit like defeat to me.

As someone with ADHD, one reason for this may be this: for years I covered the side of me that fell short with extra effort. Where I could not keep up I caught up by running harder. What I forgot I made up for by taking more notes. My mess I hid by controlling more. So everything in my hands felt like evidence: look, I can do it, I can carry it.

Letting go of something is like reducing this evidence.

But maybe everything I let go of is not a loss but a space. A space to breathe. A space to get through the winter.

Nobody was watching

One of the things that made me think most was this: while that leaf was falling nobody was watching. Except me.

And I do not think the leaf cared.

In the diary I wrote about shame I spoke of the audience. Of thinking, while doing something, about how we look in someone else's eyes. While falling, the leaf was not looking for an audience. It was not calculating whether it fell beautifully, whether it fell at the right time, whether it fell before or after the other leaves.

When I let go of something I am always thinking of the audience. "What will people say?" "Will they say I gave up halfway?" "Will they think I couldn't do it?"

Maybe what makes letting go so hard is not letting go itself but the feeling of being watched while letting go.

A rare moment of my attention

I noticed one small thing about my attention too.

Usually I put a lot of effort into directing my attention somewhere. It does not go where I want. It slides not toward the important but toward the interesting, the new, the urgent. Today, with no effort at all, entirely by itself, it got caught on a leaf.

And for those few seconds none of the tabs in my head were open.

I do not want to describe this as a method, because it is not one. You do not focus by dropping leaves (I wish). But it reminded me of this: my mind is not always scattered. Sometimes it scatters only because it is trying to hold too many things at once. When for a moment it lets go of what it holds, it can look at a single thing.

Looking back

After the leaf fell to the ground it was dragged a little by the wind, then mixed in among the other leaves. I could no longer tell which one it was.

It did not look back at its branch. Leaves do not look, of course. But I do.

I look back again and again at everything I let go of. If only I had done it like this. Maybe if I had held on a little longer. Maybe if I had not left that job. Maybe if I had not said that sentence.

There are times when looking back is of use, I know. But sometimes looking back becomes another way of carrying again what you let go of. Not in your hands but in your mind.

Today I said this to myself: if you are letting go, really let go. Do not carry it in your mind either.

I am not sure I can do it. But the sentence felt right.

The tree I want to be

I do not want to be a tree with no leaves. Letting go of everything and being left bare, carrying nothing, holding on to nothing... That too would be a kind of escape.

What I want is to be a tree that knows which leaf's time to go has come.

To be able to tell which I should keep carrying and which I should stop carrying water to. And to go on my way after what I let go of, without shame, without looking for an audience, without looking back again and again.

Maybe I cannot learn this this autumn. Maybe it will take a few autumns.

But today a leaf fell and I stopped and looked.

This too is a beginning.