As humans, we tend to lose lots of things.
We lose our teeth when we’re younger, our hair when we’re older and our minds at every age in between.
Yet in the frantic search for a misplaced sock, we tend to forget about everything else we may have lost growing up.
Growing up means losing a lot more than just baby fat. Imaginary friends, innocence and honesty are all taken as collateral damage of aging.
As adults, we lose more than just the occasional pound here and there.
We lose jobs, relationships and friends. Sometimes it’s our own decision to lose these things and other times it’s anything but our own.
The fact that we all lose things along the way is a universal feeling.
We all experience the pain of a lost love, the agony of a misplaced set of keys and the humility of having lost one or two left shoes.
The art of losing is a simple one — one minute it’s yours and the next it’s not.
That’s simplicity at its finest. The difficult part of losing something is the aftermath.
Nothing exemplifies this better than cleaning up after a breakup. During this clean sweep, you tend to find things you couldn’t while you were together. Things thought to be lost forever tend to appear and remind you something less tangible has been lost. Misplaced pictures, ticket stubs, love letters, half a set of handcuffs, balloons of a happier time, all seem to woefully materialize like totems of lost relationships.
Naturally, we tend to look for things we have lost. Through fliers posted for lost cats, beds upturned for lost money and closets ravaged for a lost sweater, we instinctively attempt to regain what was once ours.
Loss is often a domino effect. Sometimes we lose sleep, peace of mind and points on a test as a result of losing a job, friend or lover.
At other times we lose more important things like sense of self or self-respect. Either way, when losing we tend to lose more than one thing at a time.
Just like the saying “death comes in threes,” loss comes exponentially. It just depends on how far along you let it go.
The trick is remembering that all which is lost is eventually found.
Whether it’s found by you or by someone else, everything is eventually picked up off the ground. Lost jobs are filled, lost lovers are re-loved, lost friends are befriended.
Yet we often can’t help but remember that that was lost with a tinge of pain. Just like phantom limbs, the pain remains as a constant souvenir we never intended to buy.
So next time you find yourself hysterically looking for that lone sock, remember it’s bound to show up eventually.
Whether it turns up inside your dryer or inside your dog’s mouth, it all will reappear eventually.
Hassan Casanova is a third-year family, youth and community science student at Santa Fe College. His column appears every Friday.
