In the previous article ‘Search or Seek’, I had talked about how search is transactional and seeking is transformational or spiritual. If you were to reconstruct your day, you would make an ‘I-did-list’ and ‘I-did not-do-list’. Yes, you forgot something, right? What did you forget?
We forget what we call as ‘people, things and deeds’. Of these, things you did not do, you can make up in another ‘to-do-list and get back. We don’t need to search for the forgotten deeds.
How about people and things?
We search ‘people and things’, when we lose them. If we find them back, will they be the same? Can we accept them as they are found? I had written a poem on this under the same title ‘lost and found’.
LOST AND FOUND
The mind searches for the last image of where we left them,
The visuals and the walkthroughs that we attempt to cobble together
About the beloved thing or the thing that we needed
But somewhere lost when we seek or need it
When we remember we go to the place we forgot
And search there – it is the same place, but it is long past
If we get it, the delight of finding the lost object
Else the desperate search, visualizing and trying to remember
At some point, we all give up on it that could never be found
Life goes on, some with fond memories and others with regret
Yet in the long run, we could live without it for better or for worse.
It is the same about a person when they leave us
For short periods or longer, forever or for good
When we try to cling to them we still can’t
For life goes on, or else death takes them away
If they are alive there is a possibility to reunite or meet
But it is the same body but a different person
This time changed and weathered by Father Time
Yet we expect them to be like they were
Like how we had them in our memories
The person has gone or changed if we meet again
Our fickle minds play tricks, bringing pain, joy and sorrow
Just because we bury our head in the sands of time
To understand that people change for better or for worse
So will we ever find what we thought we had lost?
We are happy when we got back the ‘thing’ that we lost. But when we don’t get back, we either replace the ‘thing’ or go on in life without it.
But when we lose people, forever or for good, we live with their memories. Either they move away or their life ends on this great blue marble that we live on.
Now let us look at people who we got back in our lives – the one who we had lost, and searched for. When they come back, are they the same people? Mostly, people change with time. Time brings in experiences and memories to people, and also signs on our once-smooth skins with wrinkles and scars. These experiences and memories, wrinkles and scars transform people.
For the person, that is ‘us’, who is searching for the ‘lost person’, acceptance of the transformation of the ‘found person’ is not easy.
I would love to hear your experience on this.
Of course, I have not written about ‘losing and finding ourselves’. That is for the next article. Look forward to your thoughts.