Pain of loss

Emotional pain is a feeling that most of us experience at some point in our lives for various reasons. I think the worst emotional suffering any human can go through is the pain of loss. Whether it is losing someone we once cared for, losing a family member, losing a friend who occupied a big part of our lives, or most relevant to our digital present, losing a routine that revolved around tangible interactions, asserting the fact that we do exist as physical beings, not mechanical fingers typing on a keyboard. It’s the loss of a feeling of belonging to something that made us once feel like our existence mattered in this world, like we are noticed and valued, and like we can use our voices and expressions to communicate with others -an affirmation that we’re more than just numbers and codes and Instagram posts.

We can meditate all we want to understand that we are whole at any present moment, and that the entirety of life is present right here, in this brain box, accessed through mindfulness. But is it true that we can exist in harmony within ourselves without a need for belonging? And if that’s true, why does the loss of belonging carry us into such dark places? I am a positive person, and I do believe that intense emotions are transient, even when they seem like a non ending spiral. But I also believe that positivity and acceptance do not negate grief. We’re sensitive to our surroundings in varying degrees, meaning that we’d find ourselves attaching emotion to places and nature and conversations and people. The energy we perceive from others is something we assign particular value to and integrate into our being. This is why we might feel as if a loss of belonging is equivalent to a loss of self. But is it true that we’re losing ourselves? Or are we losing an emotion that we idealized and believed made us whole?