I cut off all my hair.

When I got home, my son looked at me quietly at first, then with concern and said, “Daddy, you lost all your hair. You don’t have any hair again.”

He is four years old. He has never known me without hair. So to him, this was not a style choice. It was not intention. It was loss.

That moment stayed with me.

Did I lose my hair? No. I changed my appearance. But to my son, something familiar disappeared. And that is how loss often works: it is not defined by facts, but by perspective.

What one person calls change, another experiences as loss. What one person calls pivoting, another mourns as departure.

We speak often about “pivoting” in life, changing direction, changing strategy, changing identity. But every pivot leaves something behind. From a certain angle, every transition carries the shadow of loss. Not necessarily because something was taken, but because something was released.

And yet, language matters.

Language is the light of the soul. I do not believe a life can rise above the words used to interpret it. Much of our programming happens through language, and the language of loss is almost always negative. We are taught early that loss is failure, absence, diminishment.

But experience has taught me otherwise.

I have come to see that there are no lessons without losses. What we often label as loss is life insisting that we grow up. The popular saying goes, “You don’t know what you have until you lose it.” But another text says something far more unsettling: “He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life will find it.”

There is a strange peace that comes with being acquainted with loss. Not because loss is pleasant, but because it strips illusion. It teaches you that you own nothing, not even the things you call your greatest assets.

Breath itself is our most essential possession, yet we do not have the formula to hold on to it. Life is fragile. Scripture calls it a vapor, appearing briefly, then vanishing. If life itself is not guaranteed, what then is truly secure?

In my own language, I say this: the day assigned to a bird’s departure has nothing to do with its skill in flying. Whether it flies well or poorly, the day comes all the same. Dexterity does not negotiate destiny.

So I keep returning to that paradox: He who finds his life will lose it; he who loses his life will find it.

What it has come to mean for me is this: nothing is worth holding too tightly.

Life itself involves loss. I have lost things, some through foolishness, some through ignorance, some through sheer circumstances beyond my control. Yet when I look closely, there is nothing I have truly lost that did not also give me something in return. Whenever I lose a thing, I look for the lesson. Some things were meant to be lost. Some losses were tuition.

There was a season when my life seemed defined entirely by loss. I lost both my parents, my father and my mother, within one week. In that period, everything appeared to collapse. Wherever I turned, things stopped working. I felt as though I was losing everywhere at once.

I did not know then that those experiences were part of my journey. What I thought I had lost were, in truth, payments made forward into the future.

Jim Rohn once shared that his mentor advised him to aim to make a million dollars, even if he were to lose it. Why? Because if you lose it, you will not lose the person you became while making it. Loss does not erase mindset, discipline, or growth.

I do not think we truly begin to live until we are free from the fear of losing. Because, ultimately, I am no longer convinced that we ever truly lose.

Zig Ziglar once told a story of a man who won a tournament and received a large prize. While changing afterward, a woman approached him and said her son was gravely ill and needed urgent medical care. The man signed over all his winnings without hesitation.

Later, he discovered the story was false. The woman had lied. When someone told him this, expecting anger, he replied, “That’s the greatest news I’ve heard.”

Why? Because it meant no child was actually sick. He did not frame the event as loss. He framed it as relief.

Perspective again.

So for me, lost but not found is not a tragedy. It is a blessing in disguise. Life itself is a series of losses. Those who are afraid of loss have already lost. Those who learn to live with loss gain something deeper.

Even death is described as gain. To die is gain. If it is gain to the one who departs, what should it be to the one who remains? We say we “lose” people, but perhaps they simply depart. The pain of mourning is real, but the language matters.

If it is gain for the one who dies, what should it be called by the one who loves them?

These are the questions I sit with.

Not answers, questions.

Just another moment of reflection, provoked by a child, a haircut, and the reminder that what we call loss often depends on how tightly we are holding on.

Do have an INSPIRED weekend with the families.