IS IT LOSS OR CHANGE?

IS IT LOSS OR CHANGE | Sneha Sharma

The meaning of music has changed. The ways of accessing it are different now. Loved ones don’t sound the same anymore. Then what is home? The place or the people? You step out of your room, but end up remembering three separate hallways before arriving at the one you are actually in. You feel warmth in places apart from the one that should be called “home” by all means of convention. This sense of loss - is it loss or change?

I keep losing myself every 3 months, but is it really a loss if I keep becoming a newer version of myself? The past versions of me were precious - I do not want to discard them. They led me to the self I inhabit today.

The air has changed. But if you lived in the most polluted city of the world for 3 years straight, does this pollution affect you? I think the pollution has evolved as well. Is evolution the right word for this? Education has “evolved”, so has technology. They say systems need to keep evolving, but at what cost? How are we so ready to change some things but insistent about hanging on to others out of fear?

Loss in faith. What did I have faith in? The traditions, the routine, the rituals which offered the comfort of unquestioned belief. The places which felt familiar slowly become alien. You lose the intimacy which once was, when you notice the cracks. The fissures keep widening, but only for you. Everyone else continues walking over them, as you are left grappling with an unending list of questions. Does trying to hold on to the belief that there exists a force which guides us all in some way or the other count as loss?

But, with adulthood comes a constant sense of upheaval. An incessant litany of queries about everything that you believed to be true. Thus, progress and loss become two sides of the same coin - one cannot exist without the other, and if you are too scared to let go, then you will never be able to see what can be.