If life is a school, loss is a major part of the curriculum. To begin with, we enter the world suffering from the loss of our mother’s womb – the safest place we inhabited. We are thrust into an unknown territory where we’re not always fed when we are hungry, when we don’t know if anyone will return to the crib. As we get older, we lose our toys when they break or get misplaced, we lose competitions, championships, first loves and so on. In the years that follow, we lose teachers, friends, companions and parents, and yet we wistfully hope that things and people will remain as they are.
We even discover ways to indemnify ourselves against loss: we detach, we deny, we save others, we help them with their hurts so we don’t have to feel ours, we become so self-reliant that we will never need anyone.
Our lives are often dictated by loss, and sometimes new losses trigger old ones. Maybe your parents left you at an orphanage, maybe you suffered a huge financial loss, maybe your best friend walked out on you when you needed her the most, maybe you were diagnosed with a terminal illness, maybe your children abandoned you… The truth is that no one abandons us the way we abandon ourselves. We stop taking care of ourselves emotionally, physically and spiritually, and are hopelessly chained to our past.
The fact is that even within our deepest sense of loss, life goes on. Despite all the endings and losses, new beginnings are around the corner. There is so much more to life than we allow ourselves to experience. So much more is possible when the past no longer holds us captive. There is a whole new world outside of us and inside of us waiting to be uncovered.
Most importantly, remember that the love that you have felt and the love you have given can never be lost.
Just as there is no good without bad, no light without dark, no day without night, no dawn without dusk, no perfection without imperfection, no yin without yang, there is no growth without loss. Life makes us wrestle with all kinds of paradoxes, and how we move back and forth on this pendulum of life determines our journey.
Life is a series of experiences we go through. There is a reason for everything that happens, even if we cannot see it, there is a meaning to it all. Everything that has happened has occurred so we can get the lessons we need. Every experience will move us towards higher good and healing. No experience is ever wasted. Every windstorm in life occurs so you can become the person you were meant to be.
You will find that the only way out of the loss is through the loss. Embrace it. Reinvent yourself in the process.
In the end, everything boils down to love, compassion, humour, wisdom and the patience you bring to life and its many situations.
