Smile-breaks
Aha! I found it!
Aha! I found it! What a great feeling to find something you’ve been looking all over for - for the past three months. ’Course I don’t need it any more now…
Ever since an incident about ten years ago, I try really hard not to go looking for lost items. It was a Wednesday morning in Sorrento Valley and I was searching for an Important Document. Not five minutes before, I’d held it in my hot little hands, but now it seemed to have disappeared into the labyrinth of files every good manager keeps.
I wasn’t concerned. I knew exactly where I would’ve put it. Same place I always keep the legal documents. And if not there, well it would definitely be in the Pending Matters file. Or the Historical file. It would for sure be in one of those places.
It wasn’t in any of those places. That’s when I began a Serious Search. I went through the lateral files, the vertical files, and the files in the desk drawer. I rustled through every single piece of paper in all of the Baskets: the In one, the Out one, the To Do one and finally, the Waste one. While I was perusing some rather interesting papers in the Waste Basket, I thought to look under the desk and behind the door.
It wasn’t anywhere. And no one had come in or out of my office since I last held that Important Document in my hand. Maybe I’d slid it into my briefcase for further review at home this evening. Nope.
As I pulled my head up out of the briefcase, a Very Influential Person walked into my office and asked for – you got it! – the Important Document. Which I didn’t have. Well, I had it – quite definitely – but I sure couldn’t produce it for him at the moment.
I wormed my way out of that one by promising delivery tomorrow. I might have said I had a few minor changes to make, or something like that. You know the drill.
Tomorrow came and went. The Important Document didn’t went. It stayed. Wherever it was. Funny thing – no one ever asked for that particular document again.
But two months later, I was going through my file of Pending Matters when out jumped the Important Document. It was right on top of the stack - with a big smirk on its face.
I quickly and carefully put it in its’ place and ever since that day, I never look for missing items. My motto is: “If you look for it, you will not find it.” Followed by the truism: “If you don’t look for it, it will turn up when you least expect it.” The corollary to both is: “If you find it, no one will ask for it anyway.”
True to form, this morning my paper with all the month’s transactions recorded neatly in sequence turned up. I’d been not looking for it all week, so I was really relieved to discover it there, neatly stapled to the back of a totally unrelated document.
“Aha! I found it!” I exclaimed. No one was listening. No one really cared. Actually, no one but me even used the document.
Here’s where I should tell you how unimportant everything is and how we get ourselves all excited over nothing. Instead I’m going to tell you I went outside last night and - I found it! There it was! Mars itself. Herself. Himself. Whatever… Bright and orange and glowing. I hadn’t even known it was lost or that it had been so far away for such a long time.
Mars was shining its orange light so brightly you couldn’t possibly miss it. Now I’m wondering if those orange highlighters would do the same for my Important Documents. Or better yet, for my car keys…