Losing speed

We have all seen loss, we have felt it.

I got an empty feeling in my stomach, like someone had punched me in the gut, It felt as though someone had carved something out of me.. They say that the gut and mind are connected, and I felt it. It was devastating.

We have felt it, we have seen it.

When I was a kid, my parents bought me my first expensive sandals, I was happy that day. After a week it was Hanuman Jayanti and I went to the crowded Mandir wearing my new sandals, I removed them outside, and went in with my father for darshan. When I came out, I couldn't find my new sandals, I and my father searched, for an hour, but we couldn't find them. I started crying, and I cried the whole day. Then I grieved, for a week. My expensive new sandals were gone. I still remember this event because it had huge effect on my psyche. Today, I don't care about footwear, even if it gets stolen it doesn't make much difference to me, as I can always buy another. But as a child, it does hurt.

I think there are stages to losing something/someone you loved dearly. Grief isn't linear though, you might feel a lot of things altogether. Abandonment, sadness, anger, loneliness, laziness, etc.

Some people skip certain stages altogether, others revisit the same stage multiple times, and some may find themselves stuck in one for far longer than they expected.

I knew a friend who lost his mother when he was young, he stopped speaking, like did not speak a word for a whole year. Everyone has their own way of grieving.

When I lost my pet, I was just mad, mad at the world, so mad that I stopped speaking to anyone and started maintaining my distance from everyone. I thought attachment was the reason for my sadness, my heart felt empty. Nobody has been able to fill that space yet.

It is foolishness to think that attachment is the root cause, if you skip attachment then you skip the joy, the hope, the memories which come with it. How will you experience happiness without dedicating yourself to something/someone? The anxiety of losing it/them will always be there, but the happiness which comes from it will makeup for the grief. It will make you a better person. Everyone wants to belong, everyone wants to trust and everyone wants to be happy. Grief might just be an after effect of your journey.

You might think that if you keep your distance then you won't get hurt, it is kinda correct, but if you don't take the risk then your soul will be empty, forever.

Time heals all. (Usually, your wound might never heal)

There are a lot of things happening and life moves on, so do you, you just carry the sorrow with you. Nostalgic sorrow. It will not be the last time you get hurt. Someday you will lose someone near and dear to you, and you will fall apart for a while. After that you will get back up and move on. That's the way it works. The world keeps spinning no matter what happens.

Our mind is good at protecting us, it suppresses memories of things that hurt us. I don't have a full memory of lot of moments which at that time caused me pain. It is a good mechanism. Suppression. Sometimes, you just need to ignore your sorrow. Some will say that no, you need to be vulnerable and talk about it, naah, I mean you can talk about it if you want, but there is no shame in not talking about it and letting the matter rest. Not everything will come to bite you back in the ass.

It is like that ancient artefact in movies, which if you leave alone, will not destroy the world, but if you keep trying to shake that artefact out of its slumber, it will destroy the world. Many people might not agree with me on this, but scratching the skin until it breaks, bleeds and then heals, is just a longer route of getting to the destination rather than just leaving it alone and taking a nap.

Meditation does help. Yoga does help. Running does help. All kinds of exercise does help. Note it down. You can just sweat your way out of a problem.

I am not trying to tell you to endure pain, I am telling you that if you do things, then the pain eases, after that you can work your way through it, some talk it out, some suppress it, some become violent and start punching walls. All acceptable short term solutions. But if people depend on you then you will find a way to work through the pain. You will carry it with you, it will become a story in your journey.

Optimising for stories can be a north star of your life. The more stories, the more social you can become :P