“You can hold yourself back from the suffering in the world, but perhaps this ‘holding back’ is the one suffering you can avoid.” – Franz Kafka

James: That is the quote underneath my email signature. I often delete it because, well, I’m not sure my ER scheduler needs to reflect on suffering as she plots my shift life, but I have it there for me. Franz is a bleak dude, and to stay on brand, he undersells it. Letting go of the holding back doesn’t just rid you of one suffering, it wipes it all right out. In meditation, we’re going to play with the feeling of permission, what it tastes like in our experience to let things be simply as they are (as if they could be any other way).