Loss and change or change and loss

Whichever way one writes it, it doesn’t really make much difference when one is speaking of a negative event.  However, point of perception, should one speak of weight loss and change being buying new clothes to go with the new body, it would be totally positive and better written in the first manner.

My thoughts this morning are not quite so positive and the change and loss of which I write currently are not pleasant. Much has been written throughout millenniums about loss and I certainly couldn’t add anything new, however, viewed from one’s own perspective, loss is always new, always personal, always pertinent to oneself. It doesn’t matter that others have been there, that the platitudes of “if one door shuts, another opens”, the beauty of “better to have loved and lost than to not have loved at all”.

Interestingly enough the word loss itself seems to have only come into use in the 13^th/14^th century: Wiktionary states: “Etymology
Old English has los "loss, destruction," from a Proto-Germanic root *lausam- (see lose), but the modern word probably evolved in the 14th century from lost, the original past participle of lose, itself from Old English losian "be lost, perish," from los "destruction, loss", from a Proto-Germanic root *lausa (compare O.N. los "the breaking up of an army"), from Proto-Indo-Eeuopean base *leu- "to loosen, divide, cut apart, untie, separate"

Were ancient philosophers unacquainted with the notion? That would be hard to believe – they perhaps just didn’t use the word, but rather spoke of change instead. “If you don't get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don't want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can't hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.”
― Socrates

My conclusion: sometimes change and loss are unpleasant enough to merit floundering a bit in their negativity; to not put a happy spin on it, nor to justify the better things that may come as a result. Sometimes, loss is just that: an absence of something or someone that devastates. Time enough to pick oneself up and adjust to the change: first weep, wail and wallow!