Change and Loss

I've talked with my sister recently about the human tendency to bestow meaning in the things surrounding us, animate or not. It seems a natural way to navigate through the complex world. We create placeholders to orient life amidst chaos. 

When through unrelenting, inevitable change, the familiar surroundings leave our lives, it feels like part of our very being is lost. It hurts so bad when the manifestations of our memories and identity are taken away. Sometimes the deep meaning these symbols of our creation have goes unrecognized until the weight of loss begins its heavy tug. Left hollow, lost, confused, our shape-shifting nature is unveiled as a series of layers that can never be ordered in the same way again.

I maintain that the worst part of death is how the absence gradually becomes normal. The presence is no longer present. It is forever a thing of the past. The tragedy is not only that which is gone, but so too that which is left behind by the living; the slivers and chunks of a fragile self that is buried with the dead. 

One of the defining themes characterizing my entrance into adulthood has been the loss of what once was. Aging is tangible now, and I have lived long enough for it to show me its mighty grip. Coming to terms with the ultimate reality is, in a way, what adulthood seems to essentially mean. 

As much as change makes the bad better, it takes what is good, too. Therein lies the trouble. It's a cruel setup that the greater something is, the more devastating, the more piercing its demise and disappearance will be. Even what is inside, protected by mass, mental barricade, and the shadows of the soul, is not exempt.

The highest challenge we the conscious face, the most insurmountable, crippling monster bearing down on every waking moment, is reckoning with change. For change is life and life is change, and refuting its authority is a losing, self-destructive war of attrition. 

To find peace is to accept change. It is a clear yet unbelievable taxing, emotional journey that seems to require the stuff of gritty fortitude and caring embrace. Loss makes me want to hate the unjust world, to lash out in a futile tantrum that forces the hands of time backwards so that I don't have to ever deal with it. I guess accepting it all means filing those reactions away and, instead of ruminating on the loss of what was, welcoming the creation of what is. And having faith that what is, and what will be, is worth a damn. 

Lastly, a song I heard again after many years: Dust in the Wind by Kansas