A Brief Pause in Time

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

“One Art” – poem by Elizabeth Bishop, 1979

I am finishing up “Time, Part 3” and the plan is to finish it today or tomorrow.  Two posts in one week.  Unheard of, I know.  J  But right now, I feel compelled to post something I wrote almost two years ago.  I wrote it in the midst of very different life circumstances, but it feels very true to me today, and in the midst of change and upheaval, truth is all we can cling to.  My twenties have brought me many challenges and joys and I have learned from every one of them, but this time in life has taught me one lesson more than any other: very few things will live up to the expectations I’ve created.  And while that may seem like a disaster, it’s not.  So, without further ado…an old piece of writing that takes on new meaning for me.  Maybe it will ring true for some of you, too.

At what age is it too early to talk about the benefit of loss?  Most children don’t sit around pint-sized tables, molding Play-Dough, sharing graham crackers, and waxing poetic about no longer being in diapers and what they’ve learned from potty training.  Most teenagers don’t Facebook post each other, agonizing over saying goodbye to dress-up and imaginary friends while trying to find meaning in how they’ve changed since their dollhouse and toy gun days.  Young humans charge into the thick of life so confident, so sure, and so ready to leave the past behind.  The fear of getting in too deep doesn’t really exist, and this brings with it an excitement to taste life and all it has to offer.  The untainted young sprint toward change because most of those life shifts mean growth, and stronger than any other craving at this age is the desire to “grow up.”  But somewhere along the way, that visceral delight in change and loss transforms into a palpable fear of change and loss.  Suddenly, change isn’t about growth anymore; it’s just a sign that things are starting to get out of control.  When that shift happens, the young-and-slightly-nervous slow down.  Still-young-but-now-suspicious humans move forward more tentatively, guarding those precious parts of themselves they aren’t willing to leave behind or sacrifice.  And in this process of changing from fearless to fearful, instinctive to cerebral, all humans start to try to avoid and rationalize loss.

I know now that the intersection point of fearless and fearful happened for me when I was about nine years old.  My family moved a lot when I was a child, and because of that, I think I was forced to learn how to deal with loss at an early age.  I’ve always prided myself on my ability to keep in touch with people from all areas of my life, and I believe this was my earliest way of rationalizing loss – “If we keep in touch, it will be like we’ve never parted!”  Leaving friends behind was something I could control by writing letters and making phone calls, so while the loss was great, it was manageable.  However, pulling out the map of my past and re-tracing my steps only shows me that as a young girl, I was fooled into believing that all loss was manageable.  Social problems, fights with my parents, and a frustrating lack of dates as I continued my journey through grade school and high school harshly rearranged my ideas about loss, and no amount of emotional alchemy was able to transform what life was teaching me.  So, I dealt with it by not dealing with it at all.  By the time I hit about sixteen, I was a champion loss-avoider, while still believing firmly that I had control over all areas of my life, lost or not.

It wasn’t until my sophomore year of college that the stark truth grew to be unavoidable: I wasn’t as in control as I imagined.  I believe my story is just a version of everyone else’s – it’s almost fodder for a fill-in-the-blank statement.  “I was only _______ years old when ______________________ hurt me so badly that I was no longer able to cope, and for the first time, I realized I wasn’t completely in control of my own life.”  For just about every adult I’ve ever met, what fills those blanks is nowhere near as interesting as what comes after that completed sentence.  The real question is not “What happened to you that made you come face-to-face with loss?” but “What did you do when you realized you couldn’t avoid loss any longer?”  To me, the answer to this question is what gauges whether or not you’ll survive your own life.

After sophomore year, my sprint toward “grown up” slowed to a variety of speeds as I realized I couldn’t always control the losses in my life.  Life has been a walk, a jog, even a “stop because I have to barf,” and as I’ve searched for the speed that is most comfortable, I’ve also struggled with what to do with the things I find myself dropping along the way.  Necessary losses are able to be rationalized away, and the pain from those losses subsides more quickly than not.  But what’s a girl to do when the loss is not only painful but doesn’t seem so imperative?  How is it possible that unnecessary losses can hurt just as badly as necessary ones?  And how do I deal with the loss of an expectation -- when nothing has been lost except for my castle in the sky?  It’s questions like these that, I believe, have crippled me into believing that change and loss are only vehicles for pain.  It’s questions like these that have prevented me from making important decisions, and have sent me into a series of mental gymnastics in an attempt to find meaning in my own losses.

It’s really only been in the last six months that I’ve started to discover how God fits into my weak and human attempts to work through my loss and pain.  While I’ve always had faith that God is Who He says He is, and I’ve always believed that Jesus saved me and sent the Holy Spirit to live in my heart, I can’t say that I’ve always looked to this same Trinity to help me deal with life when I can’t handle it.  The supernatural strength that my Savior imbues in me far supersedes any strength I could ever hope to find inside myself.  And in my attempts to control my own life and its losses, I’ve often been blind to the people that God has sent me to help me cope.  I may never completely understand my own losses, my own pain, my own past.  But I am learning that it is the other loss-avoiding, pain-filled, past-rationalizing human beings who populate my world who are part of the answer to the questions I spend so much of my time contemplating.  God shows me His grace through the grace that the people who love me show me every day.  And it is my privilege to do the same for them.  Is there too early an age to attempt to find some benefits from the losses I’ve suffered?  I don’t think so, because as life continues on – painful or not – I am learning to live a life where I believe that “all things work together for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.”  May my life – suffering and all – be a testament to that fact and a light to those who are looking for answers in their own loss.