Everyday Canvas

Losses in Life

Prompt: Your losses in life

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Especially in the beginning years of my life and a few decades after, I had a lot of losses. Some of those might not be considered losses by most people, but they were losses to me, but I have dealt with them, immediately or eventually. So, rather than digging them up, I am going to talk about losses in general.

A loss can be an expected one, such as what a fatal illness brings at its end, or it can be a traumatic one such as a sudden accident, a sudden end of a career or relationship, or the shocking result of a powerful outside event such as an earthquake or a storm.

When faced with a loss, the best thing to do is to share the pain instead of burying it within oneself, which I am guilty of doing to this day. Thinking about it, I believe this is because there exists intense pain at the core of a loss. This is why we try to avoid it. We run away from it. Then, some of us run away not only our own grieving but also from other people’s griefs as they remind us of our own losses. For example, to this day, I hate funerals in any shape, form, or belief system.

If dulling the pain for any physical illness is the aim of the medical profession, then why not try to do the same with an emotional disturbance, one might ask. The answer is simple. Dulling the pain of a loss doesn’t make the grief go away. It only covers it up. Moreover, everything inside will be tamped down and hidden under an emotional rug, which means small things may trigger a much bigger effect and reaction when stepped on. Even in medicine, after dulling the pain, doctors perform surgeries and cures on their patients to get rid of the disease.

That is why we have to do the work of grieving. We need to let it run its course, and we need to find outlets for it to express itself. All arts are very good for that as are some other things depending on the person.

Pain points to change; pain is what allows a person to change, enabling the person to reach a new reality for that person’s functioning in life can be free from feeling that pain constantly.