The Irrational Fear of Loss 🍃

---

Losing It All

We worry concerning losing things all people are going to lose anyway. We are therefore distressed concerning losing them; we might do absolutely anything to avoid losing them. In fact, we might sacrifice everything we love—if necessary—just to avoid the thought of ‘losing everything we love’.

Is that rational? The ‘irrational’ fear of spiders or planes is sensible. We will avoid those and survive. However, the ‘rational’ worry of death doesn’t make any sense. It’s not like we will avoid death. And once we die, we have a tendency to were all so distressed concerning losing can now not be ours to fret about.

Finite Time; Don't Waste It

We are therefore essentially petrified of the thought of losing everything (dying), we are determined to not consider it (which makes it an even more intrusive thought). Curiously, attempting to not notice one thing is typically known as denial, avoidance behaviour, or another undesirable habit.

Even stranger, we have a tendency to appear to ignore the transient nature of Life as much as we would like to ignore the permanent reality of death (preferring to safely examine it, study it, or watch movies concerning it—the better to prolong what we are avoiding the brevity of). Still, it’s not like we will attempt really hard to not die.

In any case, we have a tendency to worry concerning losing our lives anyway, and that constant conflict is sort of a constant concern in our periphery. Denying death is sort of like a toddler having a fit once it’s time for a nap—because that recently activated mind doesn’t want to sleep. And it’s funny that this mind (that doesn’t appear to get any older) typically feels trapped in this companion body (that can’t avoid getting older).

Cherish The Good Times

So, the human mind frequently tries to avoid this ill-natured mental terror by swapping physical elements in and out—using living items from the not-so-lucky (whose minds appear to have left their bodies prematurely). And that we try this primarily to keep the ageless mind alive—even though this body (not this mind) flowers and fades like a splendour within the grass. And once finally, this temple perishes, we miss it thus.

So, though we should always know better, we have a tendency to deliberately avoid time with those we thought we might never miss a moment of—in a fruitless struggle to keep them in our thoughts rather than our arms. Ironically, we sacrifice this transient time we had together, having reasoned that (if we see one another less) we'll miss one another more.

Thus, the memory of having given up what we admired most of all, becomes a logo of our enduring fondness for each other. And every one the while, all we wanted to do was whisper how much we cherished this time together, and assure one another softly while both were shortly here.