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Is it Possible to Miss Something You’ve Never Had?
Decoding a sentiment that has never been grasped by words
A few years ago, I was walking in Prague with another solo traveler I met at my accommodation. He was a near stranger. We met an hour prior and were carrying on a conversation about nothing in particular. I don’t remember much about him, but I do remember when he started to ask me a question that he never had the chance to finish.
“Have you ever missed something…”
he paused just long enough for me to say:
“That you have never had before?”
He stopped walking for a split second, gazing over at me before saying, “yeah…” in a perplexed way.
I don’t remember the conversation before or after that. What I do remember is that although we both knew the feeling, neither of us understood it. Exactly how could you miss something that you never even had in the first place?
We couldn’t give an explanation, so we didn’t try to.
Describing the Indescribable
I later learned that this mutual feeling we had was one of the many ways to describe the term saudade, the Portuguese word that seems to have no exact literal translation. This elaborate expression has…
