Practicing the art of losing

^{Image by congerdesign from Pixabay}

Everything in life is fleeting.

Nothing but time itself, which seems to be the guiding thread of existence (at least as we understand it), persists. Everything is fleeting.

Since we are going to lose everything in life, what we have to do is learn to lose. We will inevitably lose money, lose friends, lose family members.... Our health will gradually deteriorate, or we will lose it suddenly.

Everything we think is crucial, essential to our lives today, will one day cease to exist.

We live too much for our reputation, our achievements, and our professional successes.

Even our problems did not exist forever. And when we think about problems before they even exist, does that make sense? Are we worried about something that has not yet materialized and will not last forever?

Everything is fleeting.

Why do we take everything so seriously? Life is like a rope... It stretches from the day we came into the world and one day it will be cut. There is nothing we can do to bring us closer to either end of the rope... We can change something in our lives that makes the rope longer or shorter, but it is finite like everything else.

Why do we spend a significant part of our time worrying about what others think of us and the image others have of us? Those others won't even remember you exist. We shouldn't even care about people who don't know us and who make judgments about us. Being concerned with the opinion of those who do not know us ends up bringing us down, not because of their opinions, but because of the time we spend thinking about those opinions. We punish ourselves by not accepting that the opinion of others is just that... That it is not who we are or what we think.

Why do we get stressed about small problems?

We act and think as if everything were permanent, when in reality nothing is. We get stuck and cling to things that are already disappearing... We waste our limited time (our time... that rope I mentioned earlier... which is not continuous for us) by worrying about losses that have not yet happened...

When we accept that loss is part of life, we can finally relax and face life as it is...

^{Free image from Pixabay.com
Original text written by me in Portuguese and translated with DeepL.com (free version)}