I guess I would like to affirm that we all experience loss – in an extensive multitude of forms. We experience death, sometimes at an early age. We experience the pain of the end of a relationship or the sometimes more difficult pain of never having the chance to start one with someone we love and admire. We experience losses in friendship on a social level and losses in health, the inevitable greying of hair and degeneration of aspects of our health we once took for granted.
We may at times experience losses in our mental faculties or at least experience moments that may affect our mental wellbeing. We experience losses in trust, affection and sadly even self-value. Some of the most brutal and hostile thoughts arise from losses in self-compassion. We are hurt by the absence of protective boundaries and values that give us the strength to reject these poisonous thoughts.
Pain and loss go hand in hand. We rarely experience one without the other, though admittedly not all painful experiences equate to losses there is a substantial overlap. Perhaps one of the harshest, most penetrating forms of pain is at the loss of something, some person that we love, cherish or value.
The sad reality of all forms of loss is the ability of the human mind to go beyond the mere experience of the loss to thoughts such as ‘life is painful’ or ‘I live a sad life’. We pass from experiencing pain and at times sadness, to making assertions about the permanence of such conditions – or even worse that we are in some sense deserving of the pain we experience.
In the face of this possibility, we owe it to ourselves to not be seduced by such toxic thinking. Indeed, in the face of often hyper-competitive capitalism and aggressive social domination that may be at the heart of certain forms of loss we owe it to ourselves to take a step back. And a deep breath in. We often hear that those that are successful are ‘winning at life’ and those that are not are ‘losing’ – or worse ‘losers’. Importantly, in response to this we should distinguish between ‘loss’ and ‘losing’. Just because we experience loss does not mean we are losing at anything. Loss is often an inevitable consequence of the randomness of being, it is no one’s desired outcome to lose a loved one or to suffer a debilitating illness.
In these moments there is no winning or losing, only the unfortunate reality of a particular type of loss, specific to each and every individual. More generally, it is crucial that we do not leave an experience of loss feeling like we were in any sense deserving of its unrelenting consequences. It can be all to easy to believe that just because a loved one decided to end the relationship we are no longer deserving of being loved. Or that because we have never yet had a meaningful sexual experience that we are never deserving of one. Breathing out, we must see that we owe not just ourselves but those around us the compassion to not judge our value by those things that would not be experienced intentionally – by anyone.
Finally, some of the strongest, colorful people that we encounter are also those that have experienced the harshest degree of loss. Recovering from loss, can itself be a painful and testing experience. It may take months or even years, though let it in the very least not define our character, who we are, or blur our potential to experience joy and offer love in newer horizons.
We owe it to ourselves to build compassion, respect and love in these periods of recovery.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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