What I meant to say then is this. That life is loss, sure. But it’s not cause for despair, not entirely. If we get what we want there’s loss then too. An apartment in Paris in exchange for loneliness. So maybe we don’t get that — Paris. But we get something else instead. Something that we would have lost. And it doesn’t replace Paris. How could it?
But that something else and the next something else fill our lives and we have those things and not the other things. A collection of stones and glass rather than paper and twine and sealing wax.
And this is life. To say we don’t want loss is to say we don’t want to live.