A pair months in the past, a pal of mine misplaced her cellphone. The subsequent day, one other pal misplaced his pockets. These items weren’t simply misplaced; they didn’t floor the subsequent day. They hadn’t slid out of a pocket and down between the sofa cushions solely to be discovered whereas tidying the home. The cellphone and pockets disappeared and didn’t come again. They appeared effectively and actually misplaced.
We misplace issues on a regular basis. “Keys, cellphone, pockets,” I repeat as a mantra earlier than I depart the home, the workplace, the bar, patting my pockets to verify we’re intact. We’ve all skilled that “Oh no, the place’s my …” feeling. We’re certain we misplaced some important merchandise and are hit with a sense of doom so intense, it’s nearly breathtaking. Then, simply as shortly, that beautiful wash of aid if you discover that your cellphone is, in actual fact, within the pocket of your coat — false alarm, disaster averted. You might be, for a second, a modified particular person, an individual who glimpsed the horror of getting to name the D.M.V., and you bought a last-minute reprieve. You’ll hold higher observe of your stuff to any extent 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. Shedding issues is rarer. The truth that two good pals misplaced vital issues back-to-back appeared bizarre, like a selected sort of dangerous luck had zeroed in on my social circle. Somebody clever as soon as suggested me that when issues appear unusual or complicated or too symbolically weighty, we would ask ourselves, “How would I interpret this if it have been a dream?” It places far between us and what’s taking place. What if I had a dream wherein folks in my life stored dropping their issues? How would I interpret that?
“Lose one thing every single day. Settle for the fluster / of misplaced door keys, the hour badly spent. / The artwork of dropping isn’t laborious to grasp,” Elizabeth Bishop wrote in “One Artwork.” The poem begins by discussing the lack of inconsequential issues like keys, then strikes on to larger losses: “three liked homes,” “two rivers, a continent,” “even dropping you.” Small losses put together you for giant ones.
Within the dream wherein my pals hold dropping seemingly insignificant issues, I see symbols. The pockets and the cellphone are boring necessities, the untreasured, unremarked-upon instruments of residing that we take without any 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 understand it. Now there’s all this confusion, all this problem. Why are we so careless? Why will we take the whole lot without any consideration?
In my interpretation, I’m tempted to see a lesson in holding on to issues extra tightly, in holding higher observe, in cherishing more durable. However once I requested my pal who misplaced her cellphone concerning the expertise, she described two hours of panic. The subsequent 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 might get all over the place I wanted to, that I truly had the whole lot I wanted,” she mentioned.
Oh! After all! Impermanence! I all the time overlook. 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 totally right here and now. And when it’s gone, it’s gone.” The cup is already damaged. The cellphone and pockets are already misplaced. We now have the whole lot we’d like. The issues we’re afraid of dropping are already gone.
Understanding this doesn’t hold the fear from setting in each time I feel I’ve left my cellphone in a cab. However within the quiet moments once I’m calmer, I’m attempting to meditate on the issues I’m holding too tightly, to loosen my grip a little bit, to hold a little bit extra flippantly the teacup, the pockets or cellphone, the folks and locations and concepts I’m clutching, as if clutching will hold them from vanishing.
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