Let Your Loss Leave You With Something Greater Than It Takes

We’re deathly afraid of loss because it always takes from us. It leaves us feeling defeated and empty and hopeless. Nobody likes feeling like they are lesser than. Less than their loss and less than the thing that took it from them. We fear loss of self, loss of identity, loss of love, loss of an opportunity, loss of a dream, loss of friendship, loss of income, loss of home, loss of youth, loss of health, loss of an unfulfilled expectation.

We hate not getting what we want because it means that we can’t really control other people and shape circumstances to our liking. It makes us feel insignificant and powerless, which is the most feared feeling in the world.

It’s strange how we let this feeling of loss totally govern our lives by constantly running from it. Our primary motivation to achieve anything is driven by the avoidance of loss rather than the fulfilment of our potential. Most of us are desperately trying to escape into a fantasy by choosing to deny the uncomfortable truths of life, and glossing over the dark underbelly of the pursuit of happiness. See, we cannot ever be truly happy if we are always chasing it. We cannot ever be truly happy if we are always lesser than it. We cannot ever be truly happy until we learn to fully embrace this frustrating, challenging, fulfilling, exhilarating thing called life. We can only be truly happy when we learn to live with our losses, make space for them and wholeheartedly accept them into our lives. It is such a regrettable thing to live in constant fear of death, when we could be living with joy, with peace, and with acceptance.

Listen, the incredible thing about us is that we are human and possess the unique ability of alchemy, the magical process of transformation; the transmutation of matter and thought and emotion.

You see, you have the unique power to turn joy into warm laughter, turn grief into salt water, turn blood and bones and sweat into shining gold and glass, turn a stranger into a best friend, turn something lesser than into something greater than.

Can you not do the same with loss by turning it into a lesson? Can you not be like a tree in cold September shedding its leaves to bear new ones, like the thick white snow melting into clear running water, like the seed sprouting to life from dormancy underground?

It would be so beautiful if you could use the anger or sorrow from a past love’s memory as fuel to love better and harder the next time. Maybe your past revealed the parts of yourself that you needed to improve. Perhaps it taught you that love isn’t always sweet and that you should take better care of your heart. How wonderful would it be if you turned a failure into a success by simply reframing the way you perceive it? Maybe your failure revealed all the ways you did something wrong so that you could do it right the next time. Perhaps it brought you to your own attention by pointing you towards your true calling. Or maybe it taught you empathy and humility and compassion for the shortcomings of others.

You see, you are no ordinary thing. You are made from the vast expanse of the cosmos, from brilliance of the stars and the sun, from the universal elements of fire, water, ether, and earth. Your losses can’t break you because you are much stronger than them. Your losses will show you who you really are by discarding the layers of everything that you are not. They will mirror the ever-changing reflections of your light and shadow back to you.

No, your losses won’t break you, because they worked to build you from the ground up.

Let your loss leave you. Let it go.

Let it kill you and bring you back to life.

Let your loss transform you.

Let your loss leave you with something much greater than it could ever take from you.