Lost Property: A Life's Work Overcoming Heavy Blows

Reviewed and approved by the psychologist Sergio De Dios González.

Written by Raquel Lemos Rodríguez

Last update: 20 December, 2023

Sometimes life hits you with really heavy blows. Life’s not always light and colorful, but you still have to keep on confronting it with your whole self.

You’ll occasionally have thoughts pop into your head like “Why me?” or “I don’t deserve this!” But it has nothing to do with deserving it or not. The things that might happen to you are surrounded by darkness. But it’s in your hands to see the light in all that black.

One of the hardest experiences anyone can go through is dementia. It’s a disease that works directly against your memory, or against the people you love most.

When you have it you lose a lot of your memories. You also forget who people are. But is there any other way to look at this?

Take a look at this short video on dementia:

You have to face the blows with patience

There’s a great lesson you can take from this. It’s one you can even use in your daily life. When life hits you with heavy blows and you feel like you’ve lost everything, you might feel the need to push back.

Or you may rush into actions that will reverse the situation or make up for it as quickly as possible. But you’re forgetting to be patient.

We don’t generally put up with uncertainty very well . The fact is that not knowing what might happen to you in the future can cause a lot of anxiety. 

This will make you feel like you’re on the edge of a pit with no clear bottom. This pit has a lot to do with the feeling of a loss of control that unexpected, negative events and news might bring.

So what should you do? You need to have patience and perseverance. You have to stop expecting to solve every issue overnight and  start focusing on the little steps to make things better. Take these steps with a lot of effort and, above all, a big helping of hope.

So facing the blows life brings your way with patience doesn’t mean you’ve lost hope. It just means that you’re going to try to use love and live with this uncertainty of not knowing what will happen tomorrow. You do know what will happen today. Because in the here and now, it’s really you who’s in control.

The little things make it all worth it

Another lesson is to focus on the little things, even if they seem unimportant. That’s because a lot of the time you can find your own happiness in them. But sometimes years have to go by and you have to reach the age of the main characters in the short film before you realize that.

We’re always chasing big dreams, trying to accumulate things, and wishing for uncountable riches. But the things that are truly valuable are within the smallest things, the ones you can barely see.

When someone has dementia the big dreams crumble. Accumulating things doesn’t make sense anymore. What do you have left? And here’s the magic of it.

Grab life while it´s there for you

A lot of the time it seems like life has to hit you hard for you to open up your eyes and truly notice all the things you don’t value. 

The strange thing is that they’ve always been in your reach. They weren’t things you had to make an effort to get. They were right there, you just had to appreciate them! But you didn’t do that because your attention was elsewhere.

Even though the blows life hits you with are heavy and cause suffering you shouldn’t ignore one positive aspect they definitely have – they help you open your eyes. We all live on a constant autopilot that leads us to nothing but more setbacks and unexpected problems. 

Now is the time to stop waiting for things to happen. That way you can start to appreciate the little things, the life you have. You can start cultivating the patience to face up to anything that didn’t turn out like you wanted it to. 

These are valuable lessons. Love, appreciation for the little things, and a slight change of perspective can be the beginning of an amazing journey alongside the person you love most. Even if their reality and yours don’t line up.