Monday Mantra: Losing/Finding

A mantra is a sound, syllable, word, or group of words that is considered capable of "creating transformation".

Every Monday I will post a new thought, idea, or focus for the week. When you need a breather from life, when you need a little inspiration, or when you're about to jump over the conference table and strangle your co-worker, remember the mantra.

Monday Mantra: When we lose one thing, we find something else

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Last week I lost a necklace, one I'd had since I was 16 and that's always hung from the rear view mirror of my car. It was a Lucky 7 necklace, with seven silver rings each representing something different: long life, good friends, health, love, wealth, peace, and happiness. The owner of a Lucky 7 necklace is supposed to turn each ring in one full circle every day to "activate" the luck, so to speak. While I never followed those rules, I did enjoy playing with it every once in a while. Turning the rings around and around, fiddling with it while I waited at a stop light. I'd had it so long that it seemed like an essential piece of my car. Like the steering wheel or the brakes. Like my car would be somehow wrong or broken without it.

I considered getting a new one, but the idea of that seemed silly to me. I started to wonder if maybe losing the necklace that I'd had more than half of my life meant I would soon find something new for the next half. I wondered if maybe change, like Fall, was in the air for me. Besides, how does one replace something with meaning? It's not a 1:1 equation. Life is not exact like that.

I began to consider all the things I've lost in life: people, objects, memories, youth. How losing things changes a person. How people still continue on, survive, and even thrive without them. How we find a way to replace, rearrange, re-do.

How we find.

This, I've decided, is essential. The finding.

This holds true, however, to the losing as well.

I look back on my twenties, a time now lost, and see all the paths I didn't take. How one might have been slightly easier. How another might have changed everything. It's easy because I was once there and now I'm not. This is something you earn by growing older. It is a game of losing and finding: losing time, but finding wisdom. Of course, there are things I wish I would never lose. People I love. Memories that make me, me. Life doesn't work that way, though.

Happiness does not come without sadness. Courage does not come without fear. New beginnings do not come without endings.

We may trick or scare ourselves into thinking things should always stay the same, however, what we should be doing is finding a better, more graceful way to let go. To lose. To accept defeat when it is handed to us and to rise with the knowledge that by looking and searching we will eventually find - people, hope, love. Maybe even new necklaces.

Many times in life we will lose, yes, but we will always find what is next meant for us.