Every community of which we're presently a member will someday become a "lost world"—lost to us as we depart and move on, or lost to everyone as the community as a whole comes to an end. We tend to resist acknowledging this reality. It reminds us of mortality and can evoke feelings of sadness at the impending loss or a sense of frantic urgency as we try to stave it off.
But as a result we miss unique opportunities to appreciate these communities while they're in existence and to fully grasp what it means to inhabit them with a particular group of fellow human beings. We may also find ourselves surprised or even overwhelmed when a familiar and comfortable world is suddenly lost because we failed to anticipate the impact of our departure or the community's dissolution.
Some of our worlds are created by an institution in which we have formal relationships with the organizing body and our fellow members: a school, a company, a team, a communal organization. Others are more amorphous, with fuzzier boundaries and overlapping identities: a culture, a hometown, a family. Some worlds correspond with clearly defined life stages that can last for years, while others are created and dissolve fluidly in the span of a single day.
Reflecting on my own past, I can recall a number of lost worlds that continue to hold meaning for me, even though they may play a minor role in my life today, or no role at all: A craft center where I took art classes as a child. My high school track team. My freshman dorm in college. An intellectual history class in my senior year. My career in social services. A group of motorcyclists who welcomed me as a novice rider. My first T-group in business school. My later career in nonprofit technology. My colleagues on the first coaching staff at Stanford.
It's rewarding to be reminded of these lost worlds, but I'm also aware that at times my inability to acknowledge (or even envision) their transient and fleeting nature kept me from making the most of these experiences and the relationships they fostered, and rendered my transitions and departures less fulfilling or more abrupt than I would have wanted.
This awareness motivates me to pay closer attention to the many various worlds I inhabit today--to see the water I swim in, to feel the air I breathe. It's sobering to realize how quickly each of them will end and become yet another lost world in turn. And yet acknowledging this fully and embracing the complex and uncomfortable feelings that it evokes allows me to to be more grateful for these worlds and the people I share them with. I take none of it for granted.
Photo by icelight.
