Gloria Steinem died yesterday.

I’m glad for my memories of her. The first impression (of which I’m not proud), so many years ago, was: This beautiful woman is a feminist? And then she donned that silly bunny costume for an inside look at the New York Playboy Club, and I realized: She doesn’t identify with those looks, she uses them. Not much different, I understand now, from how Dolly Parton used those out-of-this-world blonde wigs and glitzy clothes and jewelry. What did Parton say? “It costs a lot of money to look this cheap.” And also: “Find out who you are, and do it on purpose.”

You know you’re really comfortable with yourself, even love yourself, when you can clearly see the impression you make on the world and use it towards fulfilling your purpose in life. To Gloria Steinem, I say: Thank you for your life.

Often, when I meet folks who haven’t seen me in a while, they say: “You look great!” Hmmm, I think to myself in my best Scrooge imitation. Because I know they see the white hairs and the multiplying lines on my face, and for God’s sake, I wonder, don’t they know I’m 76? Or do they really mean: You look great—for your age.

It reminds me of how, many years after Bernie lost some 50 pounds, people he saw every month or two would congratulate him on how much weight he’d lost. “Why are they saying this?” he’d muse. “I lost that weight years ago, and still they repeat the same thing again and again. I guess that’s the picture they have of me regardless of how much I’ve changed.”

If self-love depends on doing doing doing, guess who’s only doing now, with a rest in the afternoon? If self-love depended on leading a big sangha, guess who that never happened to? If self-love depends on how well you host folks for a big dinner, forget about it. If it depends on what kind of giant Thanksgiving meal you prepare, you might find that your kids now prefer to go elsewhere for the holiday, or that you be the guest. So, who loves you now?

My mother had a hard time stopping to cook for the Friday evening Sabbath dinner and being a guest at my brother’s home, a 5-minute walk away.  Even then, she insisted on making the chicken soup, and, her taste buds somehow affected, she added so much salt that the family would swallow a few tablespoonfuls and then make excuses that they were already full.

She used to make a special noodle dish for her synagogue’s Saturday after-prayers buffet, which was widely praised. She’d make two big trays of it every Friday till she was 88 or so, and finally stopped, she confessed to me, when her arms simply couldn’t lift the enormous pan of noodles to empty it of the hot water in which they’d cooked. To her, that’s what love depended on: her cooking. Without it, she wouldn’t be loved, not just by others but also by herself.

Look at yourself in the mirror. Do some new lines bother you? A good friend shared with me that Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop, told her: “You don’t want another wrinkle? Don’t have another feeling.”

Now, when you’ve forgotten to pick up something at the store. Now, when you can’t remember what book you were reading last night. Now, when you haven’t folded and put away the laundry for a week. Now, when you know you must talk with someone but can’t remember who that is. Now, without achievement, without having someone to take care of, go to the doctor with, cook for, now—can you love yourself?

It’s one of my biggest challenges, even as I can no longer depend on the things I once counted on to be loved. Not by others, by me. That was always the issue, self-love.

So here we are, it’s just this now, it’s just me. Not Bernie’s wife, not Roshi, just Eve, with a disappearing waistline, shorter than she used to be, and less everything: energetic, focused, hard-working. It’s now or never, Eve: Can you love yourself?

Yesterday, in early morning, I tried to prepare for a monthly gathering of olders and elders that Geoff O’Keeffe, the Director of Zen Peacemakers, and I will lead starting on Tuesday, September 8 (it’s free and you can register here). But I couldn’t focus, so instead I went outside to sit.

A maple leaf caught my eye as it floated down. It fell slowly from the tall tree, and at the last moment some ineffable movement of air caused it to veer to the right, towards me, and then land gently on the ground a foot away. Almost as if someone had guided it towards me. And there it lay, a humble yellow leaf on the green grass, dotted with brown fungi spots.

Instantly I thought: This is how I want to go, humbly, just like that. Stepping away from things up front, from talking, teaching, even writing, which is funny as I’m getting ready to send a play out with a hope of getting it produced. It’s timely and could be important, I want to tell potential producers. But an inner voice queries: What’s important? Come on, what’s really important?

What’s important is to go with tenderness like that leaf, floating in the air at first, then landing on the grass silently, without any fuss or bother, and yet certain of its place on the ground after landing.

I’m in that floating stage, I thought, still sailing here and there, right, then left, but am I certain of my place on the ground?

I thought of what I continue to carry, the work I still want to do, the dreams I still have, the good life I still wish for. I thought of past relationships and marriages, the companionship I still yearn for, all that is here now and can go on for another while. And at the same time, beckoning me from the green earth, was a simple yellow leaf whose stem somehow broke earlier than others’. It could have cried out in anger and despair, insisted it’s not fair, what about the others, why me right now, it’s still too early. Instead, it fell so tenderly down to the ground.

It’s both together. It’s wishing for more life, and it’s the tender floating to the ground. I don’t have to choose between the two, I can desire a good new life with a lightness of being rather than the determination I usually rely on. I can go on, and slowly float downwards all at the same time.

I looked and looked at the leaf. How much did it cling to tendril-like branches? Did it yearn for perpetual sunlight? How wary did it turn as clouds gathered and the nights turned cool? How fearful of the end of the season?

Our Kwan-yin stood some 25 feet away, almost in a direct line of vision to the leaf and to me, and saying to the leaf: “Thank you for your life.”