I was listening to PBS the other day, a lot of my odd notions derive from things that I start contemplating while listening to PBS, but that is really neither here nor there. The topic under discussion was things lost and found, specifically about a woman who had repurchased the home she had lived in as a child. As this discussion was happening, I was in the process of searching for my camera, things lost. It seems that you never sort out just how important some things are until you lose them. My camera, for instance, was needed to start taking pictures of some work that I wanted to put on the web, but that was not really relevant. That was an economic issue. If I couldn’t find the camera I would need to replace it, but that is just money and inconvenience, nothing irreplaceable. No, the real issues, the issue with anything lost are the things that are not replaceable. The things that you value, that you have momentarily forgotten about in the rush and harassment of day to day life that occasionally consumes us.
As it turns out, the pictures from my recent trip to Europe were on my camera. Through the tumult of returning and getting through the next few months, I had put off, delayed, not bothered with the process of downloading them to my computer. Now they were lost, with the camera. Something irreplaceable, through my distraction and inattention was, potentially, gone forever. In that moment, I knew that I valued them, that record of my life, of time with my daughter. Gone.
So, I started thinking about other things that get lost along the way. Things that we value that through inattention, distraction, wanton destruction, get lost as we live. When you see a “Lost Dog” sign posted somewhere, don’t you wonder “How did that happen?” You know those people loved their dog. How did it happen? A moment’s distraction, a gate left unlocked, being torn between two obligations. All it takes sometimes is an instant and objects, moments, people are lost. Sometimes it takes longer.
Sometimes it takes a concerted effort to achieve alienation and neglect, but eventually things are lost, people are lost, connections are lost and then we discover their true value. The tragedy is that often in our haste and distraction we lose sight of the value of keepsakes, notions, emotions, memories, friends and family until they are gone, missing, lost.
I found the camera, eventually.