Is there a word for missing something before it's gone?

#31—Perhaps not in English, but there's music and Zen.

Welcome to Mind Flexing, your weekly thought expedition to everywhere and anywhere. Strap on your boots (or put your feet up), take a deep breath, and let’s get flexing.

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I remember the stillness of the morning, the silence, the brisk air of dawn, and the grey-blue sky mirrored in the glacial lake at my feet, its waters cradled in weathered rocks and suspended above the waking world. I remember feeling free and alive—so alive—a speck among the sublime beauty of our hidden camp in the snow-capped peaks of Canada’s Kootenay Ranges. I was happy, and yet, shrouded in a strange, soft melancholy.

Is there a word for missing something before it’s gone?

Warm tea on a mountain top watching the sky burn pink over the red and yellow ranges of Australia’s arid heart; the wild waves of the Southern Ocean swelling up from Antarctica to smash against East Cape’s black cliffs; the lingering roar of the earth in a quake; the day’s first rays inhaling moisture from the crevices of the Andes to breathe life into the clouds above; an orca, so close I can almost touch it, giving birth in the shallows of a secluded beach; the pale mountains beyond the Oasis of the Nile; a coyote approaching in the golden grass of morning; the night sky in the desert; an eclipse.

My tiny daughters together, immersed in their play, laughing.

The Lake In The Sky, water colour sketch by Alia Parker.

I’m drawn to such moments of beauty—I seek them out at every opportunity, and yet, such happiness is never without weight because in these most breathtaking of moments there’s a profound realisation that they’re slipping away. I can’t freeze time or relive these minutes, these seconds, these feelings; and as time progresses and memory contorts, I’ll inevitably forget, clinging to a vague image and ethereal sensation of melancholic wonder.

To feel sadness at the thought of losing something that’s right in front of you. Is there a word for that?

This great question was posed in an essay by

jodi {fiftybeautifulthings}

as she looked wistfully across the Seine to the Eiffel Tower.

I’m not aware of such a word in English, but I know how Jodi felt as tears welled in her eyes.

The prescribed term in psychology is anticipatory nostalgia, but even here the small degree of research into such experiences fits like a square peg in a round hole. Apparently, people who experience such emotions are negative and prone to depression, which is not me at all. I see myself as quite a realist, observing those things in life I can’t control and active about those I can. And for me, the soft melancholy I feel is almost always attached to that which occurs naturally in this world, something that I observe in wonder. I suspect, as writers and avid readers, many of you would be familiar with the duality of this sensation, and I doubt it makes you a negative and depressive lot.

Zen Buddhism frames it in a more dimensional light: mono-no-aware—the feeling of both sorrow and serenity triggered by the awareness of impermanence. It’s a core belief that’s to be accepted, but not quashed.

This emotion is perhaps best described by music, like the feeling that wells inside when you listen to Claude Debussy’s Clair De Lune, something ethereal and transient, like moonlight shimmering on a stream; a cherry blossom before its petals fall; the snow before it melts. There’s a capitulation, and then the music builds, time’s fleeting, and though you sense the end is near, you’re not ready to let go. But let go you must.

Mono-no-aware.

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Things I enjoyed on Substack this week

• Dragging Stones Toward The Sun—by

  Jonathan Foster

  A beautiful contemplation on lineage.

• Thinking About a Work in Progress—by

  George Saunders

  George explores his process of “passive” and “aggressive” thinking.

• Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe—via Irma

  An atmospheric poetry reading by Wayne Byrne.

Etymology Monday

For those who missed it, this week’s word was: bingo

And there’s an interesting little story behind how this word came to be...

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