This is why things change. It’s why gain and loss will always be connected. It’s a feature of physics. It’s not all in your head, and your suffering is justified.

 

By Johnathon Lee

“All that’s subject to arising is subject to ceasing.” – Buddha 

“Everything flows.” – Heraclitus 

Her eyes are empty, seeing but not understanding.

Mouth slack, having run out of words. The cool day dapples with clouds shrinking one by one below the horizon. She’s shrinking too. She’s full of spaces, and her inner space is beyond my own horizon. Is she cold? I’ve already draped a few blankets on her… is she hot? I hope she’s happy, drifting in a gentle dream borrowed from her youth. Maybe spending time with her father. She lost him so young. 

Melting & Uncertainty

Loss seldom happens all at once. It’s a movement, an emptying that takes something away bit by bit until there’s nothing left to take apart but the memory. Like a cup made of ice melting into itself. The whole world, the entire cosmos… statues of melting ice. 

It’s a matter of when, not if, and this casts everything in an anxious, uncertain light. Our nerves charge us with resolving that uncertainty. Distraction, rationalization, creative sublimation, self-soothing and emotional discharging are all common tactics that help us get through it until we start to forget it. 

Forgetfulness resolves uncertainty by distancing us from the loss that made us uncertain to begin with. We get more involved in daily routines again. We prioritize practical needs over our emotional and existential ones until we’re, “back on track.” 

Clocks Tick Different At Night

The ice is still melting. On those restless night, when you’re awake and alone, you might even hear it crack. Looking out the window into the midnight matter that’s pressing against the glass. It’ll take the window someday too, ya know? The wind ripped mine right out of its frame. Glass in the lawn, chilled air and a frosted curtain. 

It’s possible to admit defeat. Sitting with uncertainty risks one’s life, love and sanity. If you can look away, I’d recommend it. If you can find a branch, then by all means grasp it and don’t think about how it’s going to break as nature reasserts her orgasmic thrust into wild nothingness. 

But if you must look, you don’t have to do it alone. Where should we start? 

What Is Loss? 

Space is presence; time is absence. Everything that’s present is present in space. You, me, trees, ice and all that we do find their footing in space, safe in specific places.

Time is the transformative motions of space. It’s the duration of the how, where and what that something is. Time displaces everything in space. Whatever is is constantly canceled out by what’s about to be. Or at least that’s how it can seem.

Really, the present moment cancels itself out, a samsaric phoenix burning itself to ash before rising anew and doing it again. 

This is why things change. It’s why gain and loss will always be connected. It’s a feature of physics. It’s not all in your head, and your suffering is justified. 

Honesty Before Polity

I could spin it all into a positive direction. I could talk about the helpful, spiritual virtues we can develop by working with and learning from loss. But that’s been done to death by me and others. Unlike eternity, I don’t like repeating myself. I’m also tired of those little Buddhas that sit on our shoulders who say things like, “Don’t think that way. Think this way, do it this way because doing it this way is a reflection of who you truly are. You’ll be happier.”

That benevolent little voice can be anxiety in a set of robes. The same old inner critic sweetened by Buddhism. There isn’t “one true way” that anything is, especially not people. There’s no authentic self to gain or lose, and no universal insight that’s going to make it all okay. Those are all coping strategies, and I’m sick of the whole lot of them. 

Cruel Optimism

Cruel optimism is hope that hurts us. It’s me believing that she’ll be herself again. It’s believing that we’ll be having Christmas dinner even though my parents hate each other. It’s hope that these words will go beyond this page. 

Optimism isn’t supposed to hurt. If it does, then we’re probably taking it too far. Between cruel optimism—which disregards the displacing flow of time—and bitter pessimism—which retreats into silence—there’s the raw, unified dialectic of bare humanity. 

Integration 

When I sit nakedly with all of this, this truly dark view of time, I find myself facing a new challenge: seeing the beauty of it. 

How can I love this rot? How can I redeem it and justify my place within it? What remains in emptiness? 

Somewhere, right now, a lonely heart is pattering faster for its first kiss. There’s music pooling around a campfire. Friends are consoling each other during hard times. A baby’s being born to an excited family, and a grandparent is counting their last breaths. A single mother is working two jobs to get by while another starves to death in a concentration camp. Another is on a vacation in the Bahamas. 

That’s all happening somewhere right now, and all of those somewheres are heres too, and all of those you’s are I’s. Seeing the whole of it is to see it all happening simultaneously, collapsing local perceptions like “my life” and “your life” into “This Life. This Living.” This lets loss be just as it is, but reveals its place within the whole. 

A leaf that’s aware of the tree and the other leafs is still a leaf. It can be aware of the ground and soil, the sun and air. Its origin and its destination, but it’s still a leaf. 

Isn’t this even more strange and spectacular than surrendering oneself to infinity or negating oneself into oblivion? Grief and love are joined. Loss and gain are like your left and right sides. Life and death are like dawn and dusk which are always both happening somewhere. 

The Lesson?

As the sun sets, we’re given the knowledge that it has set here. We must broaden our scope for the knowledge that it’s still shining. In the wake of each life and love, what is there but the knowledge that it was, and that it’s still out there over the horizon? 

What knowledge does she have with her still? Her lungs still know how to breathe and her heart how to beat. What has she come to know by losing all that she knew? 

Her face is cool, so it’s time to head in, and I spare a thought for all the melting grandmas who can still smile through the sunset. 

 

Photo: Pixabay

Editor: Dana Gornall

 

Were you inspired by this? You may also like:

Forget the Stages, Find a Path: Review of The Poetry of Grief, Gratitude, and Reverence, edited by John Brehm

Grief, Love and Loss: Shit Got Real {Part 2}

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