One Art

Then practice losing farther, losing faster

Elizabeth Bishop, One Art

How scary it must feel, to lose and practice the art of losing day after day, drop by drop. Yet how healthy and nurturing it can be, especially if deliberately chosen, as suggested by this line in Elizabeth Bishop’s poem. Each of us has lost somehow somewhere – people, opportunities, thoughts, visions, hopes, connections that seemed to matter at the time but which, seen from a distance, can be sensibly left behind precisely because we are forced to leave them all behind. There’s no other way, life says, but moving on, and becoming the flow of experience gained through memory lost. But what the poem hints at, in my view, is much more than that: turn this abrasive reckoning with grief into self discipline. Clear-headed, euphoric,  inspiring. Learn to embrace the new us, and the new other we’ll meet along the way. We may feel depleted right now, but strength will rise again. This I think is what One Art is telling us: accelerating loss, escalating loss, up to the point where we no longer know our pain, what our passion originated from, to leap into the unknown epiphany of a clean slate, and embrace life for life’s sake.