The Bhagavad Gita does not come to snatch joy away from us; it comes to show us what joy really is. We hold family, work, relationships, and possessions close, believing that devotion is proved by ownership. I have watched the things I love leave. Some walked away on their own feet. Some were taken by time so quietly it felt like theft in slow motion. I used to call this cruelty. Now I call it instruction. The Bhagavad Gita was not written for people with perfect mornings. It was spoken on a field littered with fear, where a warrior broke down and said, I can’t do this. Krishna did not soothe him with gentle slogans. He said: “The wise grieve neither for the living nor the dead.” (2.11) At first that sounds merciless. But listen again, He is not saying don’t love. He is saying the soul you love cannot be lost. The form you cling to was never the whole truth. He is pointing to a deeper current where love is not lost when the form changes. What we call “mine” is a passing arrangement of the One reality.

Echoes of Impermanence

All belongs to the Infinite; ownership is illusion.

I read the Isha Upanishad on nights when I can’t sleep: “All this is pervaded by the Lord; enjoy through renunciation.” It does not ask me to turn cold. It asks me to stop pretending that my hands can own what is already infinite. When everything is already held by the Infinite, claiming it as ours is like a wave trying to own the ocean.
Even the gods in the Rig Veda move inside a law of change, Rita, where stars burn out and are born again. If the sky itself is temporary, how could my small attachments be permanent? The Vishnu Purana calls creation “a play of forms,” reminding us that the people and things we cherish are entrusted to us only for a moment in the eternal cycle.

Love Without Possession

Act fully but release attachment to outcomes.

Krishna tells Arjuna to act with love but without the fever of attachment: “Karmanye vadhikaraste ma phaleshu kadachana” (Gita 2.47). We are free to care, to serve, to hold someone’s hand, but we cannot imprison their essence. This is not cold detachment. Bhakti texts like the Bhagavata Purana show devotees pouring their hearts into the Divine, loving fully yet knowing the Beloved is never a possession. Radha’s love for Krishna is complete precisely because it is free.
It’s a hard truth for a heart that wants guarantees. But it is also freedom. Because if nothing is mine, nothing can really be stolen. I have loved people who didn’t stay. I have loved moments that refused to last. Maybe you have too.

Living the Teaching Today

Cherish without chains; serve as life’s trustee.

What does this mean when you watch your child grow, or when someone you adore drifts away? The Gita invites a subtle shift: See the soul, not the label. Relationships are meetings of eternal selves wearing temporary names. Serve as a trustee. The Isha Upanishad advises enjoying the world with the spirit of stewardship, not ownership. Let love expand. When you stop grasping, affection becomes spacious, able to bless even in absence.
This is lived faith, not abstraction. It asks us to be fully present, buy the gift, hold the hand, shed the tear, while remembering that the essence of those we love is already united with the same Source that breathes through us. The teaching is not to stop loving. It is to love without chains. To care as a trustee, not an owner. To see the soul behind the face, knowing the soul was never born and cannot die.

The Gift Beyond “Mine”

Love fiercely; nothing owned, everything eternally one.

Nothing you love is truly yours because everything you love is more than yours: it is Divine. The Gita, the Vedas, the Puranas all sing the same refrain, life is a sacred loan. To know this is not to lose anything; it is to love without fear. When we release the grip of ownership, love itself remains, limitless and eternal.
When I finally stopped asking the world to stay, I found something that does. Call it God, call it Self, call it the quiet center that holds when everything else moves. The Gita whispers: what you truly love is already eternal, and it was never yours because it is you. So love fiercely. Hold nothing. And when the wave recedes, remember the ocean never left.