Stories of Hope: Hemingway's Lost Suitcase "How Losing Everything Can Actually Be Good."

When my ex first kicked me out I wasn't prepared. Not that anyone ever is prepared for that. But I really wasn't anywhere close to being okay on my own. It was early November. Just 3 months prior to that my beautiful mother lost her battle with a brain tumor the size of a grapefruit. I was still paying off her funeral.  I had nothing to my name. I knew no one in town that I really felt I trusted. 

My therapist told me a story a few weeks into seeing her. I'd been having a particularly awful time. 

"Have you heart of Hemingway's lost suitcase?"

"Like....the writer Ernest Hemingway?"

"Yes."

It goes like this....A young Ernest Hemingway was on correspondence assignment for the Toronto Daily Star in Switzerland. A prominent journalist and editor asked to see more of his work because he was really impressed with it. However, his writings were all back home with his wife Hadley in Paris. Hemingway asked her to bring them and bring them she did! She combed through their home and put all the manuscripts and papers she could find into a green suitcase. She even packed the carbon copies. 

After everything was packed Hadley made her way to a train at Gare de Lyon. She put the suitcase down and then went to get a bottle of water. She came back a few minutes later and the suitcase was gone! Years of his work gone, just like that. Hemingway was absolutely devastated. 

In a letter to Ezra Pound he wrote:

“I suppose you heard about the loss of my Juvenalia? I went up to Paris last week to see what was left and found that Hadley had made the job complete by including all carbons, duplicates, etc. All that remains of my complete works are three pencil drafts of a bum poem which was later scrapped, some correspondence between John McClure and me, and some journalistic carbons. You, naturally, would say, ‘Good’ etc. But don't say it to me. I ain't yet reached that mood.I worked 3 years on the damn stuff. Some like that Paris 1922 I fancied.”

However, within 4 years, Hemingway was one of the most important figures in American literature. It was also after his loss of everything, and being forced to start bare bones that he wrote "The Sun Also Rises," which is widely considered his best work.  Hemingway used this opportunity to grow and really find the voice that defined him and made him stand out from the rest. Perhaps if he hadn't felt that loss and that pain he might not have found his voice.

One of the things that I love the most about humanity is how resilient we are. Our ability to evolve is and adapt is fascinating. We grow wiser, we grow stronger, and we become better people. 

When I had nothing I was close to giving up. But that same resilience that helped Hemingway overcome losing everything helped me too. The human spirit, if you will.  I had no choice but to evolve and overcome. Sink or swim. I was not about to sink. I was not about to drown. I became stronger and I found my path on my own. I built my own life from ashes and I rose above it all. 

Now I write this from my very own apartment. A humble, little place, but my own nonetheless (and it has a parking spot! In LA!) Tomorrow I get to wake up and go to work at a job that I love.  No matter what you're going through, remember YOU TOO are resilient. 

You too will find a happy/memorable moment in your life comparable to writing a Nobel Prize Winning novel like Hemingway did with "The Old Man And the Sea." It might come in the form of getting the keys to your own apartment, or getting that dream job, or meeting a special person. But it will come and you will be happy you didn't give up.

  And from The Old Man and the Sea,  remember....“A man can be destroyed but not defeated”.