I saw a phrase in somebody’s sweatshirt on a TV show this week that read “we are the things we have lost” and I had to ponder this for a while to grasp its profundity. After searching the phrase I came across a film of the same name and multiple quotes following similar themes:

JK Rowling in Harry Potter & The Order of The Phoenix - “Things we lose have a way of coming back to us in the end, if not always in the way we expect.”

Alex Kuo - “We are what we have lost.”

Kiersten White - “We are both of us made of the things we have lost.”

Arthur Schopenhauer- “We seldom think of what we have but always of what we lack. Therefore, rather than grateful, we are bitter.”

William Shakespeare - “We suffer a lot the few things we lack and we enjoy too little the many things we have.”

These quotes all seem to be saying similar things but with enough digging, we can unearth the deeper explanations of seemingly simple phrases. What can we lose? Unfortunately, we can lose people. People can vanish from existence, never to be seen, embraced or heard again through death, disease (both mental and physical), relationship issues. In these terms, we have lost relationships that we relied on, that we took for granted, that we never cherished as much as we wish we did now.

You have become who you have lost

If we are what we have lost, this can be applied here in that if we have lost someone who has died, we become them, they no longer inhabit the world we live in but in an immaterial or, dare I say it, a spiritual sense they live on in us via memories, feelings, emotions and in the loved ones we still live alongside. We are also forever altered by their existence, therefore in this sense their life’s effect will live on in you. This effect will then be passed down and it’s immortality will be realised. In terms of losing someone to a break up, divorce or other relational forms, the same is true. Whilst we may view that relationship as over, it is never over in that it’s effects live on in you. You are altered forever by that relationship and by the experiences of it. You are the lessons learnt from that relationship. You are who you have become because of that relationship and all future relationships depend on the change that resulted from that relationship.

In these senses, you have become who you have lost. More on this next week.

Keep On Struggling,

Gregor

Photoshoot I Enjoyed - Cultivate Retreats in Wales

Alex and I recently drove down to Wales for an elopement-styled photo shoot for the newly formed Cultivate Retreats. This involved an early morning rise to shoot the beautiful sunrise at 5 am. We were involved with an incredibly talented and creative group of people ranging from photographers and videographers to make-up artists and wedding planners who were incredibly supportive and motivating. Follow Cultivate Retreats to see their beautiful content and the wonderful adventures they are still to embark on. You can also follow us here if you haven’t done so to stay up to date with our next ventures.

Your Struggle Short For The Week

WATCH HERE

Quote to Ponder

Tim O’Reilly’s answer to the question: What advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter the “real world?” What advice should they ignore?

“Let life ripen and then fall. Will is not the way at all."- Lao Tzu, from The Way of Life.

According to Lao Tzu we equate being smart and being driven as the ways to get ahead. But sometimes, an attitude of alert watchfulness is far wiser and more effective. Learning to follow your nose, pulling on threads of curiosity or interest, may take you places that being driven will never lead you to.

Mv own life has been shaped by happy coincidences. When I was barely out of college, a friend asked if I'd write a book about science fiction writer Frank Herbert. I'd never written a book, but Dick Riley, the editor of a new series about science fiction authors, knew I loved science fiction and was a good writer. I remember talking to my thesis adviser at Harvard, Zeph Stewart, who was still a friend, about whether it would take me "off course." He laughed, and said, "You're only 21. If you don't know what you're doing by the time you're 30, that might be something to worry about." Because I said yes, I came to think of myself as a writer. And because I thought of myself as a writer, a few years later, I agreed to help a programmer friend write a computer manual (even though I knew nothing about computers). That lucky break led me to start what was to become O'Reilly Media. And even later in my career, there were moments when waiting for the right moment led to the perfect outcome. Take "the freeware summit" that I organized in April 1998. I'd been thinking about bringing together people from the Linux community, the Perl community, and the Internet all through the fall of 1997, but something kept me from pulling the trigger. Then Netscape announced that they were going to release their browser as free software, and when I organized the meeting in April of 1998, the timing was perfect. The term "open source" software had been coined by Christine Peterson only a few weeks earlier. If I'd held my meeting in the fall of the previous year, I wouldn't have had the chance to persuade the assembled leaders to agree to the new name and to showcase it to the assembled press. Listen to your inner voice, which tells you what to choose. Socrates called it his "daimon." Lao Tzu said of the wise man that "He has his no, and he has his yes.?" It is this ability to wait quietly for the right moment, rather than rushing about aimlessly, that can lead even an ambitious success-hunter to capture the biggest game - Tim O’Reilly

References

1) Image Credit - RawPixel