The beauty of loss and what it can teach us

The person who follows the crowd gets no further than the crowd. The person who walks alone finds himself in places no one has ever been before. Creativity in living is not without its attendant difficulties, for peculiarity breeds contempt.

When living creatively, a person’s words and actions can be described as peculiar. Depending on how the word is used, it could mean out of the ordinary, extraordinary, and even abnormal. Often, creative living brings about the feeling that a person’s peculiarity is beneath consideration, worthless, or deserving scorn.



But cities cannot follow the crowd. The unique history of Waterbury reveals that since its inception and the rise and development of the brass industry here, the people of Waterbury applied the principles, attitudes, and manufacturing commitment through countless declared and undeclared wars and conflicts to preserve this country’s right to live free under a democracy. For native Waterburians as well as anyone who has migrated here, perhaps now more than ever before we must increase our understanding and honor for those who have come before.

Waterbury’s identity as the Brass Center of the World is over. For everything that Waterbury has gained, it must now confront all that it has lost in the process of becoming Waterbury. In a certain sense, there can be no true belonging without the embrace of loss.

The beauty of loss is the room it makes for something new. In my mind, if it was the quality of efficiency that got us here, it must be then the quality of contemplation that moves us forward. Contemplation is a state of mind that allows for each of us to spend time thinking thoughtfully about where we have been, where we are at this moment and where we are going.

The beginnings of a new shelter of belonging gathers itself slowly around us. The transition is awkward, unpredictable, and difficult. Often the temptation is to suppress this, or avoid it or cut it off in one brutal, undiscussed stroke.

If we do this, we will find ourselves an intruder on the emerging new ground. Loss always has much to teach us; its voice whispers that the shelter just lost was too small for our new souls. True belonging has a trust and ease; it is not driven by desperation.

The lonliest wave of loss is the one that carries a loved one away towards death. Roberta M. Crispino Waterbury.