Leaving-Be

This is the final section.

This aspect of my thinking is scaffolded less on the work of others and more on my personal engagement with the more-than-human world, although it is conceptually linked to my discussion of Glissant’s scene recounting the running man on the beach. By ‘leaving-be’, I want to say that withdrawal is not necessarily a failure of relation. That the Other chooses not to respond, or chooses not to be present, or chooses to leave does not negate the ethical significance of the encounter.

That a non-human flees from a human or is too afraid to perform their typical activities in a certain place does represent a harm. And in the practice of ‘sitting-with’ we should seek to mitigate those harms (which can be done by being quiet, being still, moving slowly, refraining for staring and so on). But a non-human’s decision to withdraw because they have something more important to do is ethically positive: the non-human is enacting their right not to respond. In such cases, withdrawal is not addressed to us nor is it about us; it is not a message to be interpreted; it is an expression of another being’s world-making priorities.

Letting-be is the acknowledgement that aspects of the worlds we make do not overlap. It is the refusal to seek to repair or to mourn something which is not broken.