Coping with loss is an art form. An ugly, eloquent melody that you can learn the words to even though you will never enjoy the song. As humans, it seems to be an almost ingrained attribute to be fearful of letting go of things. However, as life has taught us all (with no exceptions), losing things is an unavoidable reality.
The Four Noble Truths of the Buddha start out with the inescapable reality that to live means to suffer. No matter the level of luxury your life might be enriched with, you cannot escape pain. Or as Kurt Cobain put it so eloquently, nobody dies a virgin… life fucks us all.
It’s quite terrifying when you think about it. Someday, no matter how hard you try to avoid it, you’re going to be in a lot of pain. Whether that is physical or emotional, there will be a dark seek of chaos planted in your brain and for a moment it just might consume you. But a moment doesn’t have to mean forever.
Of course, suffering is not the end of the story. You don’t have to sit there in perpetual terror. We have to trace back the root of our pain, and the Buddha says the origin of suffering is attachment. All of our suffering is woven in with our insatiable cravings and the pain that comes with being denied our desires. Ambition, lust, want, greed… these emotions all swirl into a conflicting cycle of discontent that is difficult to escape.
The third cycle is the hardest for me to grasp. It is possible to cease our vicious cycle of pain. We can control our wants and end our suffering. We are capable of liberating our minds and bodies from the perpetual gloom that clogs our pores like pollution. We don’t have to live with the dirt, even if we can learn to accept it.
Lastly, we can follow a path of enlightenment to learn to shed our minds of desire and focus on balance for our bodies. This doesn’t mean that it’s easy to let go of things. It’s a luxury to intertwine your life so deeply into someone else’s that the you feel the very grooves of your souls are in harmony. But in order to be truly free, we have to face the reality of the world. And we have to learn to accept it independently.
The truth is one day we are all going to die alone. Everything we see, no matter how wondrous, will one day cease to exist. But this reality doesn’t have to frighten us. Let go of what you think you need. Your spirit is stronger than you might think. And if you’re not capable of handling the future right now, fear not; we are constantly evolving and the person you are now is not as strong as the person you can soon be.