Diary of a Lost Wanderer ~ The art of Losing

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I somehow cannot recollect my first loss clearly. As far as my memory goes it was the loss of my best friend in 3rd standard. For an 8 year old it definitely seemed like the end of the world as I kept writing her name next to BEST FRIEND in every slam book for years before concluding that perhaps she never felt so for me. 

One of the very first lessons I learnt through my losses was this: “What you feel for someone need not be the way for someone. That is no way means you are not supposed to feel for them like that, nor does it mean that they are supposed to do so too. “To each his own” applies here too.” It took me a while to grasp this completely but once I did, it brought me lot of peace. And this lesson came to me from none other than one of the great master Osho. 

I still remember that endless night when I was crying with the skies for company lamenting the long list of losses in my life till then when I recollected this question I had read somewhere in one of those books by Osho flipping through it randomly someday, “Just because you love someone the way you do, does it mean someone has to love you the same way too?”

Source: www.legacy.com
It is very easy to call someone a loser but if looked upon closely we all are losers in some way or the other.Sometimes a dream, at times a loved one, a favourite thing, a dear friend, a precious possession, an unforgettable memoir…the forms of losses change each time along with the degree of pain and hurt. What also changes is our strength as with every loss our resilience towards pain keeps improving till perhaps finally one day we reach a stage where no loss affects us. It feels like a very ideal situation to be at least in words but in reality it is seldom achieved because at any stage of life we all have at least one Achilles heel. 

Life has tested me a lot just like each one of us and at the same time has blessed me in abundance with enough gains too. And if all that has come at the loss of few things whose absence has now become a habit, should I be complaining about it? The very realization of this ultimate truth came to me the day when one day I couldn’t identify myself in the mirror. I kept staring at my reflection playing the game of “Find 6 similarities” for long before accepting defeat. 

In losing all that I had loved and liked I was losing away a piece of myself bit by bit. My soul kept chipping away as I mourned their loss till the day when I had changed beyond recognition. That was the moment when I learnt the most important lesson in the art of losing. “No other loss in this world is worse than losing yourself.” 

At the end of the day the losses never decrease or go away from our lives. Life is as much about gaining as much as it is about losing.

P.S: This post was written under the #ChallengerSeries #BlogBuddyMavericks as a part of Blogchatter in response to the prompt challenge thrown by Chandni who blogs at Life in Technicolour. Thank you for such a lovely prompt that was just the perfect thing I needed this weekend! 

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