A pair months in the past, a pal of mine misplaced her telephone. The following day, one other pal misplaced his pockets. These items weren’t simply misplaced; they didn’t floor the following day. They hadn’t slid out of a pocket and down between the sofa cushions solely to be discovered whereas tidying the home. The telephone and pockets disappeared and didn’t come again. They appeared nicely and really misplaced.
We misplace issues on a regular basis. “Keys, telephone, pockets,” I repeat as a mantra earlier than I go away the home, the workplace, the bar, patting my pockets to ensure we’re intact. We’ve all skilled that “Oh no, the place’s my …” feeling. We’re positive we misplaced some important merchandise and are hit with a sense of doom so intense, it’s nearly breathtaking. Then, simply as rapidly, that beautiful wash of reduction while you discover that your telephone is, the truth is, within the pocket of your coat — false alarm, disaster averted. You’re, for a second, a modified individual, an individual who glimpsed the horror of getting to name the D.M.V., and you bought a last-minute reprieve. You’ll maintain higher observe of your stuff any further. You by no means need to really feel that approach once more.
Misplacing stuff after which discovering it’s on a regular basis nonsense. Dropping issues is rarer. The truth that two good mates misplaced vital issues back-to-back appeared bizarre, like a selected kind of dangerous luck had zeroed in on my social circle. Somebody smart as soon as suggested me that when issues appear unusual or complicated or too symbolically weighty, we’d ask ourselves, “How would I interpret this if it have been a dream?” It places a ways between us and what’s taking place. What if I had a dream through which individuals in my life saved dropping their issues? How would I interpret that?
“Lose one thing daily. Settle for the fluster / of misplaced door keys, the hour badly spent. / The artwork of dropping isn’t arduous to grasp,” Elizabeth Bishop wrote in “One Artwork.” The poem begins by discussing the lack of inconsequential issues like keys, then strikes on to greater losses: “three beloved homes,” “two rivers, a continent,” “even dropping you.” Small losses put together you for large ones.
Within the dream through which my mates maintain dropping seemingly insignificant issues, I see symbols. The pockets and the telephone are boring necessities, the untreasured, unremarked-upon instruments of residing that we take with no consideration till we lose them. Then their import comes into vibrant focus: What was even in my pockets? License, bank cards, so many receipts. Was there a present card that I’ll by no means get again? Issues have been really easy earlier than and I didn’t even comprehend it. Now there’s all this confusion, all this trouble. Why are we so careless? Why can we take all the pieces with no consideration?
In my interpretation, I’m tempted to see a lesson in holding on to issues extra tightly, in holding higher observe, in cherishing tougher. However after I requested my pal who misplaced her telephone concerning the expertise, she described two hours of panic. The following morning, although, the sensation had vanished. “I made a decision that if anybody needed to get in contact with me, they might wait. That I may get in all places I wanted to, that I truly had all the pieces I wanted,” she stated.
Oh! After all! Impermanence! I all the time neglect. The Buddhist author Jack Kornfield wrote of his trainer holding up a teacup, saying: “To me this cup is already damaged. As a result of I do know its destiny, I can take pleasure in it absolutely right here and now. And when it’s gone, it’s gone.” The cup is already damaged. The telephone and pockets are already misplaced. We have now all the pieces we’d like. The issues we’re afraid of dropping are already gone.
Understanding this doesn’t maintain the fear from setting in each time I feel I’ve left my telephone in a cab. However within the quiet moments after I’m calmer, I’m making an attempt to meditate on the issues I’m holding too tightly, to loosen my grip a little bit, to hold a little bit extra evenly the teacup, the pockets or telephone, the individuals and locations and concepts I’m clutching, as if clutching will maintain them from vanishing.
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