Art of Missing

“Not seeing you is like not breathing. I see dead leaves everywhere. The red rose looks black and crumpled to my eyes. They pain, yet no tear runs through these dry sockets I use to see the world with. The delicious smell of yours that makes my world fragrant is now an odorless, clinical place. I wish I could run these miles in a second and you could glove me up with a surprised glee in your strong arms. Maybe, I am talking too much. I am not sure, though, if these three simple and overly used words would communicate what I truly feel.

Yet, I shall try-I MISS YOU!”

Alone, bereft, emotional, sad, insomniac ache are the symptoms of throbbing for someone’s presence. Some compensate ‘missing’ with ice-cream, hot chocolate, some cake or pudding. In other words, they replace the absent individual with calories devouring comforting food. The number of people hitting the pubs and drinking themselves insane, usually attribute the impulse to the ‘Act of Missing’ someone they love, as well.

As Jeremy Sherman has pointed out in his blog, ‘missing’ isn’t always being sad.

Giving up something unwanted or unpleasant ‘a miss’ does sound like a wise choice sometimes. Most importantly, when someone becomes a part of one’s environment, he/she ends up influencing the other. Humanity is about connections- good or bad ones. When something good exits one’s immediate universe, it pains, yet when an unpleasant stimulus gets deleted from one’s vicinity it brings a reprieve.

Yet every wise man, poet or philosopher ends up ‘missing someone badly’. Poetry on longing, unrequited love, betrayal, the guilt of deception, reminiscence, and longing are different shades of nostalgia dealing with the central omitted emotion that binds the poet to the cherished.

A fragment from ‘My River’ by Emily Dickinson goes like this: My River runs to thee. Blue sea, wilt thou welcome me? My river awaits a reply. Oh! Sea, look graciously.

She makes an indirect reference to that special someone. She awaits his reply and desires to join him, in that emotional sea; to mesh herself with this person she loves. While only the creative minds write poems and music about the person being remembered, the feeling is universal.

That pang of pain, that sudden stopping of mind, that literal heartburn, those misty eyes, the lonely nights, and that sullenness of the early sun distresses every abandoned soul; suffer the pang of longing. It’s because the one who moves on leaves us, goes on a business tour or vacation takes that major chunk of the heart where love dwells. Essentially stingy, they leave behind just a wisp of themselves. That big piece of love that can keep one warm during those long wakeful nights, that caress when the nightmares knock, that makes the mornings brilliant, the days agile is never shared by the miser.

The ‘Art of Missing’ is that mushy feeling of passion that makes one ardent until their love returns. Love is a crazy feeling. It is the wackiest when it cannot be instantly articulated.

Brian Adam’s points out in his song; only when someone leaves, only then one really understands the feeling of being in love. A love that is hopeless, irrevocable, absolute.