When Life Throws You A Curveball...Get Back Up and Other Strange Philosophical Musings

in #loss2 months ago

_DSC7127.JPG


Life is strange. Period.


There is nothing you can add to this statement. It is what it is. Familiarity is the only thing people desire which they will never get. Life is never, if ever, familiar. We are always, and I mean, always, in flux, in motion, in change. As the old philosophers proclaimed, we will never set foot in the same river twice. At first, this might read strange, but when you really think about it, it rings so true. Every morning that you wake up, you have a host of different, new, and transformed memories of who you are. You will never wake up the same person as before.

Life loves to throw these curveballs, and all we have to do is to either get up, or try and dodge them. If we all life to keep on throwing these punches, we will lie on the ground, never to get up again, and to be killed by our own insecurities and problems.

We are always in a process of transformation. We move from one moment to the next. And we are allowed, with modern technology, to record these processes, these motions, the transformations. We are allowed to take photographs, to write down memories, to videograph moments otherwise fleeting and momentary. And this might be our biggest vice, as we yearn to relive the past through the present. We always seek pleasure in the past, when we lay awake at night, we scroll through pictures, words, videos, of the past, to take us back to those moments, but in the present. And when we are ripped from accessing these locked memories, we feel almost like we lost a limb.


When we are cut off from our photographs, from our notes, from our videos,
it can literally feel like we lost something so integral to us,
that we feel heartbroken, as if we lost a limb, as if we lost a loved one.


Recently, I suffered such a severance, and it is hurtful. We are always told to be strong, to not hold onto material things, because everything can change in an instant. And it does. It did. And we can do nothing about it, and even if we convince ourselves that we do not care, that we are "strong" and that material things do not affect us, it does. If we lose a photograph of a special moment, we feel a deep sense of regret of this loss, almost as if some part of the memory is taken with it. We feel this tense moment in which a part of us is ripped from our very skin. It hurts, it burns, and we feel devastated by the loss. It does not compare to losing someone close to you, and that is not what I am trying to say. But the loss is comparable. Almost as if you lost a past version of either yourself, or your loved one. Because, methinks, this is to some degree true. If we lose photographs, notes, videos, of our past selves and our loved ones, we lose so access to those memories. We only have so much memory, and we process so much in any given day, that photographs and all of these things serve as lifelines to previous versions of ourselves.


Losing touch with versions of our previous selves and friends/family/loved ones feels like losing a link to our past.


I am sitting and writing these words with a deep sense of loss, linked with a deep understanding of what it means to be human; that is, to be alive at this moment, to have links to the past, and how vulnerable all of these links are.

Moments of absolute disruption and change re-awakens the feeling that we as humans are so vulnerable, and susceptible to the dangers of bad deeds. We are alive in strange times, where you can literally have everything that is near and dear to you in your pocket. And this makes us even more vulnerable than we were, to begin with.

And this is scary. To be human is to be vulnerable, and this fact is seriously scary. Because there is always someone out there that wants to exploit this vulnerability...

I hope that you are doing well and that loss in any form does not come across your path too often... It is never nice to deal with it.

All of the writings are my own, albeit inspired by a moment I would rather forget. The photograph used is also my own, taken with my Nikon D300.

Sort:  

!INDEED

I had a scare with my PC... well... its still messed up, but I have a working PC with a 1/4 of the storage capacity.

And what is that thing I am most afraid of? Losing my data... my files and photos. Projects yes and memories as you say... not wanting to lose those drove me try and find a solution and I shall endeavour to work hard to come up with a more permanent solution to this problem!

I hope whatever it was does not hurt you too much and that you are able to let go in a healthy way.

!LUV

I lost a couple of years' worth of photographs. I never backup, but that is on me. I am the stupid one! But luckily only cell phone photographs, as the majority of my stuff is taken with the DSLR camera. But that is another headache. As photographs are expensive to print. But luckily, there is a special now at a printing place (ORMS printing) for relatively good price. I think you can print a book of 100 pages for less than R1,000.

!LOL

That is still a big oof!

Agh, it is what it is. The memories are locked in my head, so even if the photographs are gone, I will always remember them.

Why did everyone enjoy the volcano?
It was just so lava-able.

Credit: belhaven14
@fermentedphil, I sent you an $LOLZ on behalf of zakludick

(3/8)
Delegate Hive Tokens to Farm $LOLZ and earn 110% Rewards. Learn more.

(9/50)
@fermentedphil! @zakludick Totally agrees with your content! so I just sent 1 IDD to your account on behalf of @zakludick.

Indeed Logo

Yep! Always a heartsore affair, and our condolences.
!BEER

Earthly possesions! Nothing to mourn. Luckily, we are safe, healthy, and have all of the memories locked up in our minds/memories.

Ha! At my age the memories are very misty. !LOL

It is not just age. When I mark these papers my own memories start to fade. It feels like I am losing brain mass due to the bad quality!

Really an impossible job that you do under the stringent circumstances. Somebody needs to investigate that university for malpractices. But I think that you said that you will not mark them anymore, and if you do, it can save your brain mass. !LOLZ

Haha for sure. It just gets worse and worse. I should actually record some of the bad writing and frame it. It is really bad and I cannot fathom how some people have such disrespect for themselves to even submit things like that. But it really helps with having a good laugh though.

In a way, I feel sorry for them, especially the ones that tried their best, and are waiting for top marks. Our country's education system is not up to scratch, and it looks like it will not improve soon, especially now that they are thinking about laying some teachers off. I mean, how can one teacher handle a classroom filled by 60 pupils? Sheer madness.


Hey @fermentedphil, here is a little bit of BEER from @papilloncharity for you. Enjoy it!

Learn how to earn FREE BEER each day by staking your BEER.