Lost & Found: Reflections on Grief, Gratitude, and Happiness

by Kathryn Schulz

Walt Whitman, who understood the world’s abundance as well as anyone who ever lived, understood this, too. Leaning on the railing of that Brooklyn ferry, dazzled by the view, he traveled over the waters and the centuries, then looked back and saw himself inseparably connected to everyone else who had undertaken that same journey. Life may exceed us, he knew, but for now it is also made of us. We are the “and,” a part of the continuation of things, the binding between the present and the future. That is all we have, this moment with the world. It will not last, because nothing lasts. Entropy, mortality, extinction: the entire plan of the universe consists of losing, and no matter how much we find along the way, life amounts to a reverse savings account in which we are eventually robbed of everything. Our dreams and plans and jobs and knees and backs and memories; the keys to the house, the keys to the car, the keys to the kingdom, the kingdom itself: sooner or later, all of it drifts into the Valley of Lost Things.