There are times when it is meet to decrease the strong and augment the weak. Loss and gain, filling and emptying — each occurs at the proper time.
After a while, loss is gain. It is inevitable, after all; there is not a single thing in this life that can be grasped so tightly that it will not, someday, escape that grip. The season comes when all the stones that we have gathered together are only weights which will drag us down to the depths and drown us; that every thread which ties us to the world is really a chain which holds us in a prison; that the harvest we reap will neither nourish us now nor sustain us in the future. And loss is gain.
But it is painful, for the transitory things feel as though they should be eternal; and we fight to keep what we have lost even before we have fully grasped it. And, though loss is gain, eventually, it’s okay to fight against the losing every once in a while. Just as there are Pyrrhic victories, there are heroic failures. Even when loss is inevitable, some work of noble note may yet be done. The Enemy always wins, but that doesn’t mean there’s no point in fighting. Because the Enemy always loses, too; hidden in the loss is a greater victory, which is eternal, and final.
Riches slip away, and beauty fades, and strength is sapped, and cleverness is outwitted, and the high are brought down and eat dust. It’s the season; say goodbye to everything you never needed, and the loss is gain; and whatever it is that remains, you can never lose.
