Dancing With The Shadow: All The Lost Things

Somewhere out there, in the worlds that exist between worlds, there is a realm where all the lost things go.

A faded place of timeless beauty, where all your lost pieces exist, waiting.

A place frozen in time...

Invisible in the bright light of day where only perfect, whole things look shiny, all the broken things remain hidden in the shadows.

But there's an inherent beauty in the broken things too. A different kind of beauty, but a beauty nontheless.

There is tremendous beauty in missing someone.

There is tremendous beauty in missing something.

There is tremendous beauty in missing someone or something and not even knowing who or what it is you are missing.

There is beauty in the lost, the damaged, the broken.

We say we want to feel happy, we want to feel whole.

We say this is torture, that we want this to end. But there's tremendous beauty in it.

If there wasn't, then we wouldn't be so attracted, so enchanted and mesmerized by all the broken heroes in history, literature, music and films. We wouldn't identify with the broken and the lost so much.

Like in this song for example:

Or this one:

And most definitely this one:

If you think about it, most good stories start with or involve a broken person or a monumental loss of some kind.

Harry Potter was an orphan boy that nobody loved (which is the theme 95% of books in that genre follow).

The Doctor is the last of his kind. An eternal traveler in space and time from a planet irrevocably destroyed; a species lost forever. He is the sole survivor. There's no one else left. No one else left who calls his lost planet home. No one who knows what it is like to grow up in Gallifrey. No one who understands what it is like to be a Time Lord.

But there is beauty in it.

There is beauty in losing something and ending up so totally, completely and deeply broken. In losing pieces of your soul due to trauma.

Because it means something mattered to you.

Because what is truly you will always be yours, connected to you. And there's beauty in loving someone or something so much to literally tear out a piece of your soul for them.

"Here, this is a piece of my very essence. I tore it out with my bare hands for you.

Now we'll always be together.

No matter what happens, even if you exist no more, even if I'm thousands of miles away or on a different planet, a different timeline, or trapped in a parallel universe, I'll always be with you because I left a piece of me with you, like a guardian angel, to remind you someone loved you so much they tore a piece of them out for you.

And not even death can make me forget you, because I'll feel this hole in my heart, in the place where I tore the piece of me out, every fucking second of every minute of every day for the rest of my life.

And even death cannot take that away from me, because nothing can stop the magnetic pull between my soul and its lost piece.

I may not consciously remember what I lost, but my soul will remember.

It will constantly feel the magnetic pull to reunite with its lost piece.

And I will constantly feel the magnetic pull to reunite with you.

As long as the hole is there, as long as the pain is there, I will never -and I can never- leave you".

And that's the beauty in being broken.

In walking on this planet barely touching the ground, barely leaving a mark because you've lost the one thing that gave you meaning.

The one thing that justified and validated your existence here.

"I am not of this world anymore. I'm not even human anymore. Yet I keep going. Ain't life strange?".

And no one understands how you feel.

Not really.

All the ones who could understand, they are the lost ones. The broken ones.

On the outside, you are like any regular person walking down the street. But the world others see is not the world you see. What you see is like this.

Somewhere out there, in the worlds that exist between worlds, there is a realm where all the lost things go.

All the promises that were not fulfilled.

All the words left unspoken.

All the gifts that are still wrapped and unopened under the tree, years later.

The life you would have had if you married your childhood sweetheart.

Your career as a ballerina that an injury cut short.

Your favorite teddy bear that was lost when you moved at age 9. 

That first kiss that never happened because your dad opened the door while you were standing on the porch after your very first date.

The country your great-grandmother called home, as it was before it was lost to war and destruction and she had to migrate to the US.

The memories of thousands of previous incarnations. Who you were, who and what you loved back then.

All these precious things, all these precious moments, suspended in time.

Eternally perfect.

Frozen in time, in this realm between worlds that is almost here but not exactly.

So close that you can feel the lost things caressing your soul, but when you reach to touch them they are just out of reach.

A realm where all abandoned places (like Pripyat for example) still exist in their former glory.

And there is tremendous beauty in this frozen, faded realm, its abandoned places and its broken inhabitants.

And there is also tremendous potential.

See, all these lost things still remain connected to the person who loved them and lost them. The person who mourned their loss.

They are charged with years (or even lifetimes) of hoping and dreaming and yearning for them.

Even if they don't consciously remember them.

Especially if they don't consciously remember them.

Like the first season of Once Upon A Time for example. There is so much potential there! So much glory!

If you have watched it, do you remember all your thoughts about what could happen if they all suddenly remembered who they are?

There can be no season following the first that could ever carry the same power of enormous untapped potential the way the first one does.

Because the beauty of pondering what would happen overpowers the actual desire to tap into that potential and seeing what truly happens.

Because "potential" itself is a much bigger and more powerful concept than "solid thing" is.

"Potential" means it could go a million different ways. It has space. It has freedom.

Any actual thing that has already materialized can be less than what we expected it to be. Imperfect.

Because solid reality can never actually come close to the perfection that can be achieved in dreams.

"Potential" though... it's the dream. The idea. And the idea is always closer to perfect, and fluid enough to be able to shift into something even more perfect, even more beautiful, at any time. Without limitations.

Somewhere out there, in the worlds that exist between worlds, there is a realm where all the lost things go.

A faded place of timeless beauty, where all your lost pieces exist, waiting. Waiting until it's time for them to return. Waiting for you to call them back.

And this is the heart-breaking, gory beauty and power in it, and in all its lost and broken inhabitants. And in the people who lost them.

Because absolute perfection -just like absolute symmetry- is boring and fake.

Because the broken pieces are proof that you have truly lived.

Somewhere out there, in the worlds that exist between worlds, there is a realm where all the lost things go.

A faded place of timeless beauty, where all your lost pieces exist, waiting. Waiting until it's time for them to return. Waiting for you to call them back.

Some of them, you will manage to get back. Others will remain lost. Maybe forever.

But there is no reason to hide the lost and the broken pieces in shame, thinking they are ugly.

Like kintsugi pottery, we can tenderly, lovingly, put them back together and make something infinitely more beautiful than before.

PIN IT!