The fleeting nature of existence makes loss an inevitability. New things come as old ones die, existing entities are altered endlessly, and everything contains some potential for malleability.

As college students, young adults fresh out of adolescence, the concept of change is at the forefront of our minds. After years of well-intended but oftentimes overbearing guidance, we are finally free to explore the intricacies of our identities.

The autonomy we now brandish is like a young boy holding a sword for the first time—with enough time and practice he’ll become comfortable with the shiny silver blade in his grasp and become a swordsman, just as we’ll trust ourselves to make sound choices regarding our lives after undergoing some decisive encounters.

This proficiency with autonomy carries a steep price, however. The only way to truly learn something is through experience, usually, one characterized by flaws. Trying and failing, something humans are inclined to resent is the true instrument of building character.

Mistakes don’t define our identities, but they mold our experiences into units of instruction that we are able to garner wisdom from. These mistakes tend to be characterized by loss—loss of a relationship, loss of an opportunity, loss of something once thought irrevocably permanent.

These different categorizations of loss overlap and bleed together like splotches of paint on a canvas. Aspects of your life that once seemed isolated suddenly creep into the surroundings of another, allowing one mistake to gain momentum and produce effects far beyond the imagination of the naive mind.

This process, while potentially catastrophic in the short term, is actually beneficial in essence.

If one is cognizant enough to perceive the complexities of each situation, understanding the gravity a single decision carries across a wide discipline of subjects, then they can work to rectify any similar errors in the future.

In college, this commitment to constant awareness can be strained. Among the obligations demanded by classes, jobs, and relationships, there is rarely time to pause and reflect on life’s daily occurrences. We just grapple with each event as it comes, handling it as best we can, inevitably making more than our fair share of erroneous decisions along the way, and limping out, never unscathed, but somehow still breathing, still capable of soldiering onto the next situation.

However, very few of us can learn from experiences just by sensation alone. If one never connects consciously with the situation and remains detached due to personal or societal constraints, then the redeeming qualities of failure are lost. Without some sort of intellectual investment, the favorable essence of mistakes remains undiscovered, allowing its deleterious effects to dominate.

Blunders are a blessing in disguise — they just require someone with enough mental fortitude to swipe away the disguise to reveal the treasure beneath.

The human mind craves constant fixation, and negativity is undeniably infatuating. When a mistake is made and loss is experienced, it consumes our little microcosm of existence.

Oddly enough, even with this natural tendency to focus on and feed off of drama, the lessons linked to each situation are lost in the sweeping tide of time. Living through an encounter and thinking about an encounter are two completely different entities; both carry weight in learning, but oftentimes the simple act of thought is stifled in the modern age of distractions.

The lack of reflection creates a disparity between knowledge and wisdom: you know more but you don’t understand more. Those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it, and this distinctly refers to the nature of failure.

Mistakes cannot define someone unless they are given the freedom to run disastrously through a person’s life, wreaking havoc without abandon. With our newfound autonomy as young adults, we have the power to control the prevalence our mistakes have on our character. But with power comes responsibility, and very few of us can call responsibility our strong suit this early in our lives.

Errors tend to poke holes in the framework of our character, providing loss a residency in which to thrive. Coping with this constant companion of loss is another lesson entirely.