It is difficult to resign myself to the inevitability of irrevocable loss, fully feel irrevocable loss, and then put myself back out there to do it again. It is much easier to not feel; to numb the pain with platitudes, or apathy, or ignorance, or feigned ineptitude, or hopeful expectation. Each time I numb the pain of irrevocable loss, I suppress the potential for subsequent personal effort. Eventually, there will come a point in which instead of the inevitability of irrevocable loss, I have simply resigned myself to being numb.

I believe it is important to fully feel. Even when the loss is distant, impacting strangers, outsiders, itinerants, them, if I don’t feel, if I numb the pain, I will make little or no effort to improve circumstance, thus perpetuating loss; and because I am human, I am as vulnerable to this greater inevitability of loss as is the stranger. So when the loss is nearby, personal, if I have not practiced fully feeling loss, if I have not learned how to fully feel, I will either a) rely on platitudes, or apathy, or ignorance, or feigned ineptitude, or hopeful expectation, and I will resign myself to being numb, or b) I will not put myself back out there; I will become the loss; I will remain lost. I believe it better to acknowledge the inevitability of loss and know I am vulnerable, (rather than pretend I am invincible). I believe it better to feel distant loss so I am prepared for nearby loss. I believe it better to learn and put myself back out there to improve both myself and out there.

Is there anything in this existence that is not vulnerable; subject to lessening, dwindling, decline, death. Loss is natural; it happens unaided. But for me, as an existential being, to improve, to build up, to survive meaningfully, requires sustained personal effort, which I believe in turn requires fully feeling irrevocable loss. There are those who do not understand the intensity of my efforts to feel. I have much difficulty explaining face-to-face why I am sad or angry, why I am demanding and difficult, why I come across as mean and surly, why I continue to work so hard to do even the smallest things right and to do the right thing despite frequent failure, why I don’t just give up and become numb like so many others. I believe I explain it better when I bypass the tongue and filter the words through brain and heart and soul and mind to a coherently logical written explanation. When I express it verbally, my passionate intensity trips over my tongue, frequently falling on its face and/or floundering in its feculence.

I could numb myself to irrevocable loss more so than I do, but to do so would suppress personal intensity and learning and effort and potential to improve both myself and out there. I believe it is important to feel.