I found a hundred taka note on the street last month. I felt happy for about ten minutes. The next week, I lost a hundred taka note from my pocket. I felt miserable for three days.
Same amount. Same piece of paper. But the losing hurt far more than the finding pleased.
I have been thinking about this imbalance ever since. About why loss weighs so much more than gain. About what this means for how we live.
Scientists have a name for it: loss aversion. They have measured it precisely. Losing something feels approximately twice as intense as gaining the same thing. A hundred taka lost equals two hundred taka found, emotionally speaking. Our brains are not balanced scales. They are tilted heavily toward pain.
This makes sense if you think about our ancestors. For most of human history, loss was not inconvenience—it was death. If you lost your food, you starved. If you lost your shelter, you froze. If you lost your tribe’s protection, predators ate you. The people who felt loss intensely were the ones who worked hardest to prevent it. They survived. They passed on their loss-fearing brains to us.
But we do not live in that world anymore. Losing a hundred taka will not kill me. Losing a job will not mean starvation—there are other jobs, there is family, there are safety nets. The threats have changed. Our brains have not.
I watch this bias operate in my own life constantly.
When I interview for jobs, I am not motivated by the excitement of getting the position. I am motivated by the terror of rejection. The possibility of being told no, of being found inadequate, of losing the opportunity—this fear drives me harder than any hope of success. I prepare obsessively not because I want the job so much, but because I cannot bear the thought of not getting it.
In relationships, I notice the same pattern. I do not work on my marriage primarily because I want it to be wonderful. I work on it because I am terrified of it ending. The fear of losing my wife motivates me more than the joy of having her. This is sad when I think about it. It means I am running from something rather than running toward something. It means fear is the engine of my love.
The marketplace knows this about us. It exploits our bias with surgical precision. “Limited time offer.” “Only 3 left in stock.” “Sale ends tonight.” These phrases are not about the product. They are about the loss. They make us feel we will lose something if we do not act. We buy not because we want the thing, but because we cannot bear to miss it.
I bought a jacket last year that I did not need. The store said the sale was ending in two hours. I felt panic—actual physical panic—at the thought of not buying it. So I bought it. The jacket hangs in my closet unworn. I was not purchasing clothing. I was purchasing relief from the fear of missing out.
This is how we are manipulated. Not by promising us gain, but by threatening us with loss. Politicians do this too. They tell us what we will lose if the other side wins. They rarely tell us what we will gain if they win. Loss motivates. Gain merely interests.
The problem is that loss aversion makes us conservative. We cling to what we have rather than reaching for what we could have. We stay in jobs we hate because leaving feels like loss. We remain in cities that bore us because moving feels like loss. We keep friendships that drain us because ending them feels like loss.
Every change involves giving something up. Our brains magnify that giving-up. They make the cost feel enormous and the benefit feel uncertain. So we stay. We maintain. We preserve the status quo even when the status quo is making us miserable.
My friend Karim wanted to start a business for fifteen years. He had ideas, savings, energy. But he could not leave his government job. The job was not satisfying. He complained about it constantly. But it was secure. Leaving it felt like losing something solid in exchange for something uncertain.
He retired last year at sixty. He never started the business. He had spent thirty years protecting himself from loss. In the process, he lost thirty years of possibility.
I think about Karim often. I think about how loss aversion kept him safe and also kept him small. How the fear of losing what he had prevented him from gaining what he wanted.
I do not want to end up like Karim. But I feel the same fear he felt. Every time I consider change, my brain screams: what about what you’ll lose? It whispers about security, stability, the known versus the unknown. It makes the present seem precious and the future seem threatening.
This is the bias talking. This is the stone-age brain trying to protect me from predators that no longer exist.
I am trying to rewire myself. It is slow work.
When I notice fear of loss driving my decisions, I try to pause. I ask: what might I gain? I force myself to consider the upside with the same intensity I automatically give to the downside. This does not come naturally. The brain resists. But with practice, it becomes slightly easier.
I am also trying to hold my possessions more loosely. Not just physical things, but situations, relationships, identities. The tighter I grip, the more I fear losing. The more I fear losing, the less freely I live. Perhaps the solution is not to eliminate loss aversion—I cannot change my neural wiring—but to have less that I am afraid to lose.
My grandmother owned almost nothing. A few saris, some kitchen items, photographs of the dead. She seemed freer than anyone I knew. She was not protecting a fortress. She was living in a field. Loss could not threaten her because she had already let go of the need to possess.
I am not there yet. I am still attached, still afraid, still running from loss more than toward gain. But I am aware now. Awareness is the beginning.
The hundred taka I lost is gone. The hundred taka I found is spent. Neither changed my life. But one made me miserable for three days and the other made me happy for ten minutes.
That imbalance is the bias. That imbalance is the cage.
I am trying to see it clearly. I am trying to build a different scale. One where gain and loss weigh equal. One where change feels like possibility, not threat.
It is not easy. Millions of years of evolution push against me.
But I am trying.
That has to count for something.