Yesterday afternoon, I was evacuated from my home in Reno, NV because of a massive fire that was growing rapidly due to high winds. As of the time of writing this, an unexpected drop in winds and a pretty serendipitous rainstorm has helped firefighters contain the fire, before any neighborhoods were impacted. I am now back home, but the process of evacuating was something very novel for me, and that led me to this post.
When the warning went out, I thought “okay, time to collect all of my valuables and then leave”. After calling my mother to grab the things she needed, I had to decide what I was going to take for myself. I decided on my laptop, a change of clothes, and a harmonica that I happened to be practicing when I got the news. Nothing else.
Do I regret not grabbing more? The thing is, besides my very expensive computer monitor that I’m pretty sure has insurance, there was nothing that felt important enough for me to grab. No old photos, no keepsake, I didn’t even bother looking through all my drawers because if something was important, I would have known I needed it and grabbed it.
And, in the wake of almost having lost a large hunk of my belongings, I want to take some time to talk about my feelings on missing things. This is a little hard to talk about because I can’t exactly explain why my feelings on this are the way they are, but it’s something that I think a lot about, and want to offer my ideas on it.
I alluded a little to these feelings in this post, which was posted on the blog I share with my friends (check if out if you have time!), but I want to expand on it. But to be on the same page, I want to create an operational definition for the word miss (how fun!). For me, to miss something means to think about something and wish for it to be available in the present. To miss something usually implies a sadness that something is no longer with you, and a longing for it to be back. This longing and sadness has different intensities, I know that people don’t miss Full House as much as they may miss a loved one, but the general feeling of longing is still there.
And with that definition, I do not miss anything. And I want to be clear that this isn’t a “I hate the world, everything sucks so I don’t miss anything” feeling. This emotion, or lack thereof, does not spark from any bad sentiments. Genuinely, I do not experience a longing for things that are no longer, and that’s not a bad thing for me. Let’s try to walk through a few examples of things that are commonly missed and how I personally view these things.
Old foods, games, traditions, etc. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Pop Rocks, the Cheetos that turned your tongue green, and the gum that looked like a roll of tape. But I don’t miss any of those because I know that how they taste in my memory is definitely not how they’ll taste now that I’m an adult. I loved the Nintendo Gamecube, the Scooby Doo game console that you had to plug into your TV, and the flash games of the early 2010’s. But I don’t miss those, as they served a particular audience I am no longer in, and I know that playing them now would take taint the memories I had of what they were. I don’t miss Myspace, I don’t miss when people made those paper fortune teller things, or anything I look back on as critical to my childhood. I loved those things when they passed, but they passed. And now I have things that make me happy now. I have more than enough foods to love, more than enough games to love, and more than enough 2020’s cultural pieces to love. Why would I miss candy that had no good taste but all the good chemicals, or games that had terrible graphics and no repeatability, or fads that were fun for a while and paved the way for new fads? I don’t feel any inherent longing to any of this.
Old photos and memories. While I think it is fun to look at old photos and see adults in their baby forms, or see some silly scenario that happened when I was younger, these photos never make me miss the past. I’m never sad that I’m not a kid anymore, and I’m never sad that I’m not, for example, in Hawai’i anymore like I was last summer. I am just happy that I was once a carefree child, and happy that I once was able to be immersed in a culture that offered me so much. And with the Hawai’i example, yes I would love to go back someday and do more important work, but no I do not miss being there, because I do not have a sadness when I remember what happened, but a happiness. I don’t even like taking pictures in the first place. When I travel, I only take pictures because my family wants to see where I am, but I never bother looking at old photos because they don’t make me feel that sentiment that I know others do.
Friends and loved ones. This is probably the hardest to talk about. A lot of people tell me “Oh, you just haven’t made the right friends” when I say I don’t miss friends. That’s not true, I have met so many amazing people that have been so good to me in times that I have really needed support, guidance, and love. I can say without a doubt that I love my friends, and care for them immensely. At the same time, I never miss any of them. If I know my friends are safe and doing well, why would I be sad that I am not with them? I find more solace in being happy that I know them, or knew them, than I do in wishing that they be with me no matter where I go. The same goes with family, I don’t ever experience a longing to be with them, and that’s not because I don’t love them or love being with them, it is just that I know we support each other and that I will see them again, the same way I feel about my friends. And yes, sometimes “seeing them again” is uncertain in and of itself; you don’t always know if you will see a loved one again. This may be because of sickness, something that happened, or just the sheer uncontrollable-ness of the world. But if I knew that I would never be able to see my friends again, for instance, I wouldn’t miss them. Either our paths were meant to break at this point, or our relationship is stronger than physical distance. And either way, I am happy that I got to experience life with them for the time that I did.
I also want to make a point here that I am not hating on the idea of missing. I do not think anyone is wrong for missing things, nor do I think people are misguided. I also don’t want this to come across as a “wow people always look at the negative and I look at the positive” sort of post, because that’s also not true. This is simply to say that I myself do not experience these feelings, and I don’t know exactly why, but I just don’t.
That is why it is hard for me to say “I miss you” to my friends when they say it to me. This doesn’t mean I love them any less, I just don’t experience a sadness or longing when I think of them. I know I will see them again, and I can be happy for that. And if I don’t know if I will see them again, that doesn’t undermine the experiences we’ve had. This simply means I don’t miss.
Similarly, this is why I was unable to figure out what to take from my house during my evacuation. And yes, I was thinking about how much damage could happen, how much money could be lost, and how badly our family could be affected by a fire that started so quickly. And for that I was very sad, and am now immensely grateful that it did not happen. But the thing is, I would’ve been sad that I had spent money on expensive posters that would’ve be gone, but I wouldn’t have missed the posters themselves. I would’ve been sad that I didn’t have my clothes, but I wouldn’t have missed the clothes themselves. I don’t know what it’s like to miss something, and that’s not good or bad. It simply is.
I really don’t know if this post makes any sense as I try to wade through the bamboo in my mind. Please feel free to leave a comment if you think I did a terrible job at explaining myself and need further elaboration. I have a pretty keen ability to repeat the exact same thing over and over again in decreasing levels of comprehensibility.
Vulnerably,
Oswaldo.
scatterbrain 