How Can We Learn to Lose Well?

Welcome back dear Angels of Accountability….See, it worked! Knowing there were people out there, whom I did not wish to disappoint, made me keep my promise to return this week with another question.

Now, this week’s question may seem odd to more than a few of you; afterall, American culture focuses much more on winning than on losing (just ask Charlie Sheen). However, the reality of life is that we will all lose things (both big and small) from time to time. The trick, it seems, is learning how to handle loss well. Part of that comes from being resilient, like the boxer who keeps getting back up time after time after time. We often tell people (kids especially) to get back on the proverbial  horse as soon as possible after a fall, and there is wisdom in that. But sometimes, a loss is too large or too devastating for us to jump back up and return to the saddle. Sometimes, we need to sit and breath in the sad reality of the moment; we need to feel the emptiness. 

One of my favorite Elizabeth Bishop poems speaks incredibly eloquently of loss. In her villanelle, "One Art," Bishop lists a catalog of losses until finally leading the reader to the loss that feels at the center of the poem...even though we only learn of it at the end.

One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop
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. In the wonderful book Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke Box, Alice Quinn has collected Bishop's "uncollected poems, drafts and fragments." There are 16 versions of "One Art," so it appears that even Bishop struggled a bit  with understanding and describing loss. In Judith Viorst's seminal text, NECESSARY LOSSES, she writes in the introduction: "When we think of loss we think of the loss, through death, of people we love. But loss is a far more encompassing theme in our life. For we lose not only through death, but also by leaving and being left, by changing and letting go and moving on. And our losses include not only our separations and departures from those we love, but our conscious and unconscious losses of romantic dreams, impossible expectations, illusions of freedom and power, illusions of safety--and the loss of our own younger self, the self that thought it would always be unwrinkled and invulnerable and immortal." I imagine that we can all relate to some of the losses that Bishop and Viorst describe.I think that my life has taught me to understand, and even to appreciate, loss. It is the inevitable price we pay for this miraculous gift called LIFE. Having to lose the dream of a happy, intact family was almost unbearable for me. But then I grew and changed and learned that with that pivotal loss came many unexpected gains. I am a much better role model for my kids now than I was then. I stand (and leap and lunge and skip) on my own two feet. One of the things I craved for years and years is now a happy reality: my insides and my outsides match. So, if loss frightens you, or if you are having trouble letting go of something that you do not need because the loss of it scares you, think about Hugh Prather's wise words from his aptly titled book, The Little Book of Letting Go. "Some things are simple, and here's one of them: You can either relax and let go of your life, in which case you will know peace. Or you can try to control your life, in which case you will know war." Let's let go and choose peace, friends! Until next week, Rachel