What We Gain

As I contemplate (sideways, not directly----too soon for that) the probability that I will face breast cancer (my mother had it, and now, I have the same sorts of pre-cancerous cells in me that are having to be removed), I wondered why so many tend to focus on what we've LOST as opposed to what is GAINED. Thus, we consider "lost youth" rather than "gained perspective, experience, and wisdom."

Or maybe it's just in our more pessimistic moments that we focus on loss, in those moments when we look around us at our society and its continual focus on the superfluous, or on the bright and new----quickly disregarding or relegating to the sidelines what appears old or tired.

Not a novel theme for me, I have wondered this in my earliest journal from my teens/twenties, summarized in song lyrics by John Prine: