We never stop losing

My friend Christine was taking a vacation with her fiancé out in South Carolina. On their way back to Boston, they stopped at a Holiday Inn in Maryland for the night, only to wake up and find that their car had been broken into and all their possessions stolen. Christine mourned the loss of those items that are simply irreplaceable: CDs with obscure songs from her year in France, a shirt from her hometown’s sports team (a gift from her fiancé), and others.

Her experience kicked off a snowball of my own feelings about loss. It seems like loss is simply inevitable. When I think back on my life, I find a wide range of things I miss. For instance, I still miss my cute tiny apartment in Plainville, CT, and I still mourn the loss of my last job (regardless of the fact I left willingly). I miss college and having no sense of time. I miss Kentucky, and nights of endless country karaoking at Coyote’s in downtown Louisville. I miss the house I grew up in in Caracas, Venezuela.

I guess the point is that nothing ever stays the same, no matter how hard we try to escape change. Something will always hit us from left field, like a robbery, or a new job opportunity. We’re a race doomed to missing what we’ve lost.

So I guess the moral of the story is that we should learn to expect change. Hopefully the correct expectations will allow us to cope a little better, and move on sooner… but one thing’s for sure: we’ll always lose.

ina