What Do We Have to Lose?

As many of us get older, loss becomes a thing we dread. People we have known all our lives, old and young begin to die and we begin to wonder, who next, what else will we lose next? We experience the joy of gaining material possessions only to lose them when we least expect to. Then there are the friendships and those other relationships that we lose along the way. All these losses are like mini-volcanic eruptions that threaten to consume us with their lavas, their molten touches, deadly.

We almost always think of loss as something bad, something to avoid, however, no matter how much we would wish to, we can never escape its experience.

Many persons hold on too tightly and for far too long to things that do not work anymore or things we should have given up a long time ago, and miss out on what is beyond those losses. We fear losing an income so we stay in a job that we were never meant to be in or have nothing more to offer. We hold on to relationships that are toxic because we do not want to be alone, we don’t want to be the odd one out.

However, loss has many great possibilities. When someone you love dies and you feel you cannot survive it, you do. You survive and you realise that you were built strong; you were built to endure so much loss and be stronger than you were before. When you lose that thing that was more than life itself and you feel as if you have nothing, you realise that life is the most important possession you have. Life is the most important, because if you have it there is nothing that you cannot have once again that will be equal to, or greater than what you thought was so important. From that experience you come to understand that there is more to life than the things you hope to gain, whether it be possessions or recognition.

When you lose the ability to go where you want to, when you want to, you begin to appreciate the simple miracle of waking another day to experience what a particular time in your life allows you to experience. We begin to appreciate what we have and also what we do not have and realise that it doesn’t take much, just a positive outlook to transform a broken situation into a blessing. Losing the ability to truly experience freedom,means that you value it more and are willing to not only secure your own but anyone else’s that may be threatened.

When you lose the ability to have what you want because you can no longer afford it, you begin to appreciate what you do have. When you realise that you have lost some of your loved ones along the way, you begin to appreciate more, those who are left. When your health begins to fail, you begin to take better care of yourself and you truly begin to honour this temple God has given you. When you lose all your friends because of your unshakable stubbornness, you begin to seek the truth of what true humility is and get rid of an ego that had left no room for anyone else in your life.

There are so many things that we needed to lose this year and we did not even know. We needed to lose our pride, fear, doubt , self-sabotaging ways, excuses as to why things have not worked so far, our procrastinating ways. Yes, we also needed to lose someone people, because that is just the nature of relationships, not all of them were meant to last. Some people were sent into our lives to teach us and then leave us. However, in losing them it does not mean that we should forget what they left us with, the knowledge and growth we experienced and we should be grateful. Grateful that they came and grateful that they left when they did because it was the right time, it was after all only for a time. This also include things that we acquire over time. In losing things there is not only room for something else but something better that is even more suited to where we are in our lives.

Losing things fill us with so much grief, and sometimes we spend so much time griefing for the thing or person we have lost that we never recover. We never fully accept the gift of losing. We never move beyond a broken place, to be able to recognise that those losses can manifest precious gems, gems that can never be bought, stolen or sold.