We lose time, so seize the moment

We eventually lose everything we own, but what truly matters is eternal. Our homes, cars, jobs, and money, as well as our youth and loved ones, are all on loan to us. Our loved ones, like everything else, are not ours to keep. But accepting this reality does not have to be depressing. On the contrary, it can increase our appreciation for the many wonderful experiences and things we have while here.

We all experience it

Loss is a major part of the curriculum if life is a school. When we experience loss, we also encounter those we love - and sometimes strangers - caring for us in our hour of need. The loss leaves a void in our hearts. However, it is a hole that both attracts and repels love.

We come into the world grieving the loss of our mother's womb, the perfect world that gave birth to us. We're thrown into a situation in which we're not always fed when we're hungry and we don't know when Mom will return to the crib. We like being held, but then we're put down.

We lose friends as we get older because we or they move away, we lose toys because they break or get lost, and we lose the soccer championship. We all have first loves that we lose. And the series of setbacks has only just begun. We lose teachers, friends, and our childhood dreams in the years that follow.

All intangibles, such as our dreams, youth, and independence, will fade or end eventually. Everything we own is only on loan to us. Were they truly ours? Our existence here is not permanent, nor is our possession of anything.

Everything is merely transitory.

Trying to find permanence is impossible, and we eventually learn that "keeping" everything is dangerous. And there is no security in attempting to avoid loss.

We don't like seeing life in this light. We like to believe that we will always have life and the things that come with it. And we don't want to contemplate the ultimate perceived loss, death. It's amazing to see the pretenses that many terminally ill families maintain at the end of life. They don't want to talk about their losses, and they certainly don't want to bring it up with their dying loved ones.

Resistance is futile

Most of us fight and resist loss throughout our lives, failing to recognize that life is loss and loss is life; life cannot change and we cannot grow unless we experience loss. An old proverb states that if you dance at a lot of weddings, you'll cry at a lot of funerals. This means that if you are present at many beginnings, you will also be present at many endings. If you have a large number of friends, you will suffer a number of losses.

If you feel like you've suffered a great loss, it's only because life has been so generous to you. Losses in life can be large or small, ranging from the death of a parent to misplacing a phone number. Losses in life can be permanent, such as death, or temporary, such as missing someone when they leave.

Whatever you experience when you lose someone or something is exactly what you should experience. Losses feel exactly as they do. They leave us feeling empty, helpless, immobilized, paralyzed, unimportant, angry, sad, and afraid. We either don't want to sleep or want to sleep all the time; we either have no appetite or eat everything in sight. We could go from extreme to extreme, or we could cover everything in between. Being in any of these places is part of the healing process.

Perhaps the only certainty in life is that time heals all wounds. Unfortunately, healing is not always direct; it is not like an ascending line on a graph, carrying us up to wholeness quickly and smoothly. Instead, the process feels like riding a roller coaster: you climb toward wholeness, then plunge into despair; you appear to regress, then move forward, then feel like you're back at the beginning.

That is how you heal. You will recover and return to wholeness. You may not be able to reclaim what you have lost, but you can heal. And, at some point in your life, you will realize that you never truly had in the way you thought you did with the person or item you were mourning. And you'll notice that you'll always have them in other forms.

We move on - with memories

We yearn for wholeness. We hope to keep people and things as they are, but we know we can't. Loss is one of life's most difficult lessons. We try to make it easier, even romanticize it, but the pain of being separated from someone or something we care about is one of the most difficult things we will ever face.

Absence does not always make the heart grow fonder; it can also make us sad, lonely, and empty.

There is no good without bad, no light without darkness, and no growth without loss. And, as strange as it may sound, there is no loss without growth. This is a difficult concept to grasp, which may explain why we are always struck by it. But we need to accept our loss and realize that eventually, we will lose even our lives and that nothing is permanent.

This will teach us the most important lesson in life… that we need to focus on the present and appreciate the people in our lives while they are here, because they soon may not be.

And, as Eminem says… seize the moment.