A pair months in the past, a buddy of mine misplaced her telephone. The following day, one other buddy misplaced his pockets. This stuff 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 properly and really misplaced.
We misplace issues on a regular basis. “Keys, telephone, 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 rapidly, that beautiful wash of aid if you discover that your telephone is, in actual fact, within the pocket of your coat — false alarm, disaster averted. You might be, 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 preserve higher monitor of your stuff any more. You by no means wish to really feel that manner once more.
Misplacing stuff after which discovering it’s on a regular basis nonsense. Shedding issues is rarer. The truth that two good associates misplaced essential 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 would ask ourselves, “How would I interpret this if it had been a dream?” It places a ways 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 on daily basis. 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 liked homes,” “two rivers, a continent,” “even dropping you.” Small losses put together you for giant ones.
Within the dream wherein my associates preserve 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 without any consideration till we lose them. Then their import comes into brilliant 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 had been really easy earlier than and I didn’t even realize it. Now there’s all this confusion, all this trouble. Why are we so careless? Why will we take all the pieces without any consideration?
In my interpretation, I’m tempted to see a lesson in holding on to issues extra tightly, in holding higher monitor, in cherishing more durable. However after I requested my buddy 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 wished to get in contact with me, they might wait. That I may get in every single place I wanted to, that I really had all the pieces I wanted,” she mentioned.
Oh! In fact! Impermanence! I at all times overlook. The Buddhist author Jack Kornfield wrote of his teacher 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’ve got all the pieces we’d like. The issues we’re afraid of dropping are already gone.
Realizing this doesn’t preserve 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 attempting to meditate on the issues I’m holding too tightly, to loosen my grip just a little, to hold just a little extra flippantly the teacup, the pockets or telephone, the folks and locations and concepts I’m clutching, as if clutching will preserve them from vanishing.
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