Does everyone hate losing things or do some people see it as an opportunity to buy new stuff? Somehow it seems our brains are hardwired to have a half memory about things that should still be there. A bit like when I am wandering around eating a piece of toast or a biscuit and put it down and later my brain remembers that I didn't finish it at the time. Why is that? Is it a protection mechanism?
Recently we were away for 4 nights staying in two different places. We got home and unpacked and some time in the night I thought I was missing my favourite sparkly jeans - the ones I go from the op shop in Port Vincent for $7 which not only fit but had sparkles on the hip pockets. A search didn't bring them to light but a phone call to the motel did. Yes they'd slipped down under the voluminous quilt and the bed. (That'll teach me not to hang them up straight away when going to bed.)
So does the brain have an inventory of all things we are attached to even unfinished toast?
It wasn't[ so clear in the case of the flash drive. I needed to take one away with me. There is always one in my handbag (along with biros and hankies and scissors and matches for lighting birthday cake candles and a texta and cough lollies and Panadol and...) but then I remembered there was one I used to use for work and ti was no longer in my drawer. Only a half memory came to help. Yes it had the falsh mob video on it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETn0T_io-po if you're interested) and David had dropped it in to Mary on the afternoon of the day we made it and she'd given it back a week or two later. Then what? Did I give it to Graeme because it had the edited out bits that included his grandkids or did I just imagine it? So off went an email to enquire. He didn't remember it and couldn't see it but his eagle eyed wife found it and it came back to me. Such pleasure over a less than $10 device. One more lost thing found.
And lastly the mystery of the disappearing brooches. Last year I put on my new (to me, anyway) shiny parachute silk pink jacket. It had two spots that looked like where a brooch or nametag had been pinned so I got out a shiny silver utterly cosmetic jewellery brooch and pinned it on. Nice. And off I went down the street to shop. When I got home there was no brooch. Oh dear! No big deal. I reached for my little silver filigree bird brooch, which I was fond of as DB bought it home for me from China some years ago. Off I went to Singing that night and when I got home there was no brooch. Some at singing had noticed it so I rang the school to check and searched the car. Nothing. Last week I got out that same jacket and knowing of the disaster last year I carefully pinned on a brooch (a silver Japanese character which I bought in Sydney when at a conference. I am sure the twisty safety catch was engaged. I went shopping, I went for a walk and then I went to singing. "Nice jacket," said one of the singers. "Yep, it's the one from which I lost two brooches last year." And I looked down. I could hardly believe my eyes. No brooch. Three lost from the one jacket.
"The Bermuda triangle of brooches," declared my friend.
So there you go. The flash drive returned, the jeans hopefully on their way in the mail and the brooches? My brain remembers that I had them but I fear that's all that remains.
I hate losing things.
I'm intrigued about the mental cost of owning things too. It stems from the Dump Euphoria observation - the inexplicable joy of pitching a trailerload of stuff that's been hanging around far too long into the skip at the dump and returning home having severed ties with those items. I think the relief comes from being suddenly released from all obligation to keeping track of their whereabouts, or having to think about them ever again. It's almost certain that much of my mental overload comes from having "too many things", all of which need keeping track of. A place for everything and everything in its place works to some extent, until you end up with too many places. But I do agree it would be nice to be able to pick and choose which things are lost/dumped, rather than have a jacket (or circumstances, such as a disaster or personal crisis) make those decisions for us. Still, maybe that's what it takes occasionally to remind us not to allow "things" to hold us too tightly.
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