“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.” Norman Cousins
“For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul?” Jesus
“Grief is in two parts. The first is loss. The second is the remaking of life.” Anne Roiphe
I recently returned to a classic book – Herzog by Saul Bellow. It’s a strange book full of Herzog’s baffling and bizarre mannerisms. Herzog is an unemployed English professor with extraordinary intellectual powers and astonishing knowledge about all things literary, historical, metaphysical, and philosophical. In the book, Herzog moves seamlessly between the demands of his not so ordinary life and the callings of his esoteric interests. At 47, he is twice divorced, emotionally unstable, pragmatically ineffective, and in danger of going mad. He has one child from each of his two previous marriages, both of whom he loves dearly, and many lovers. He writes letters compulsively to relatives, friends, and enemies as well as living and dead historical figures. The letters serve to relieve his emotions, express his ideas, and confound his readers. They are rarely finished and never mailed. Herzog has a big heart, suffers greatly AND is vulnerable to being patronized, bullied, and betrayed.
In this brilliantly written novel, Bellow constructs a character who not only endures fleeting flashbacks, but also deals with many forms of loss – his dignity, status, pride, stability, innocence, and financial security. For those of us who are vulnerable to intellectual abstraction, we may relate to Herzog’s difficulties in persevering on a purposeful path in life in spite of the losses we suffer along the way. I know I have and do.
As many of you know, I am a big Ezra Klein fan. In a recent podcast with Mohsin Hamid, the award-winning author of The Last White Man, they discuss how we face our losses with dignity. In this compelling interview, Klein and Hamad exchange stories relating to the loss of status, stability, predictability, privilege, power, purpose, safety, illusions, and health as well as the loss of our humanity and our sense of belonging, connectedness, and purpose. Clearly, it is a wide-ranging conversation covering a variety of losses. It’s challenging to think about which of those losses we have experienced ourselves and the additional losses we may have suffered as a part of our life on earth.
For me, the first three quotes in this post capture my feelings about loss. The first quote by Norman Cousins deals with the loss of meaning, significance, and purpose: “Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.”
The second quote by Jesus (i.e. by the writers of the New Testament) deals with gaining material wealth but losing our soul in the process: “For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul.”
The third quote by Anne Roiphe, an American writer, journalist and feminist, implies that what we lose is not as important as what we make of the loss. i.e. a loss need not define us AND, with effort, can spark a transformation: “Grief is in two parts. The first is loss. The second is the remaking of life.”
We all have to deal with certain predictable losses as we journey from birth to death. As we enter the world, we lose the comfort of our mother’s womb. At some point, we have to let go of our pacifier or blanket or whatever we may use to soothe ourselves. We all lose the innocence of youth as we learn more about the world. As we transition to adulthood, most of us have to let go of the security of living at home with our parents. Unfortunately, way too many children never feel the security of a stable home and may lose that security way before they are ready.
We also have to deal with unpredictable losses: the death of loved ones, unexpected disease or disability, etc. Unpredictable and unexpected losses can be the most shocking to our psyches and souls. They shatter our belief that life will turn out like we planned it. Yes, loss of deeply held beliefs can be particularly devastating.
All losses aren’t necessarily bad: our self-righteousness, our pride, our certainty, our ideological identities, our negativity, our destructive desires, our vanity and our virginity. Loss isn’t bad if it triggers a transformation. So let me turn to the main point of this post: How do we make use of a loss to create something larger to fill the void and emptiness created by the loss.
I’ve had to deal with many losses in my life: my status as the youngest child when my brother surprisingly showed up when I was 13, my illusions of American exceptionalism when I was sent to Vietnam, the death of friends in the war, my ability to run after 3 hip surgeries and 2 back surgeries, my savings after some bad financial investments, my grandparents and parents, and – most painfully – the loss of a grandchild just before he was due to be born. All of these losses caused me to reflect deeply on life and shaped who I am today.
I also lost my childhood religion along the way, but I developed a deep appreciation for the importance of spirituality in my life. I lost my trust in our national government, but I developed a real commitment to local politics. I lost some physical mobility, so I focused more on my emotional, intellectual, and spiritual life. I lost a lot of the certainty I had in my youth, but gained a whole new perspective by doubting and exploring. I have lost some of my cognitive fluidity as I have grown older, but hopefully have been able to crystallize some wisdom in my life.
I see loss being used as a transformational trigger on the world stage as well. Liz Cheney may have lost her status in the Republican party, but she didn’t lose her dignity and she may have saved our democracy. Victor Frankl lost his freedom in Nazi concentration camps, but he didn’t lose his sense of possibility. We may have lost our physical connectedness during the pandemic, but we developed new abilities to connect virtually.
As a humorous close to this post, I jokingly complain that David Brooks keeps scooping me. As I was writing this post, I said to my wife, “I have this sneaking suspicion that Brooks will write a column on loss this week.” Sure enough, in a tribute to Frederick Buechner who died at the age of 96 this week, he closed his column with this Buechner quote: “What’s lost is nothing to what’s found, and all the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarcely fill a cup.”
Scooped again.
All kidding aside, I hope we won’t lose our passion for possibilities in spite of all the probabilities working against us. I hope that when we feel a real loss of control in our external lives, we can turn inward and develop real agency. I hope that as a result of whatever we lose, we are able to find fulfillment beyond what we could have previously imagined. May it be so.
Also published on Medium.
Another excellent post! Thank you Ricky