This is the kind of advice I always find most hard to take, even from one as esteemed as the Dalai Lama. I know I should follow this rule of life, of course. It sounds good.
But from my sometimes petty perspective, when I lose, I lose. And that sucks. Not getting what you want is just plain hard and even painful at times. The more time I spend trying to understand what lesson all that loss is teaching me and what gift I’m supposed to be getting from the overall experience, the more I want to crawl into a hole and hide. When people tell me God has a plan, I sometimes want to howl that his plan kinda sucks. Not always. Not even most of the time. But sometimes…
Here’s my take on this lessons from loss. Sometime you win and sometimes you lose. I like to win, but that’s not always possible. When I lose, I want to believe that there is a bigger, better plan. This or something better, God! Please! But when I’m on the field of life, bowed and humbled by a loss that feels real and permanent, looking for the lesson just doesn’t work. In the moment, perhaps the best any of us can do is to accept the loss, act with grace and dignity, pause to catch our breath and saddle up to try again.
About a decade ago, I was soooo close to being hired for a job a Google, for which I was eminently qualified needlesstosay. The job I eventually landed brought me into clean tech and took me around the world in a way I’d never experienced. But that loss looms large. Although I wouldn’t have been pre-IPO Google, I would have been early enough to have made (theoretically) some serious bank. Serious. But they reshuffled that team and that job disappeared. I moved on and up and everything worked out. But I sometimes wonder…
Was there some grand lesson there or is that just the way life happens? In the moment, it feels like nothing makes sense. But later, much much later sometimes, I can see just the outline of what must be the bigger plan for my life. I’m also reminded that the losses that feel so crippling in the moment seldom seem that way through the lens of time. And this too shall pass. It always does.
So I’ll try to take my losses like a woman of grace and dignity. Feel them, resist, protest and howl, if and when I must. Then, suit up and show up for the next thing because there always is one.
Later, after the dust has settled and my heart has been refreshed with hope, maybe I’ll be able to articulate lesson I was learning all that time.
Boonedoggler 