On the Hunt with Hope

Even when I lose something, hope keeps me going.

Photo by Anton Darius on Unsplash

Have you ever lost something and you know where it is but you just can’t find it? It happens to me all the time.

For instance, one morning not too long ago I dropped an ibuprofen on the bathroom floor as I was trying to shake a couple of them from the bottle. I saw the pill hit the floor and plink off at about eleven o’clock, just under the corner of the cabinet in the direction of the shower.

As I recapped the bottle and replaced it in the cabinet, I considered the familiar options. One was to forgo looking for the pill. I don’t have pets or small children. Either of those encountering it isn’t a concern.

But this option never appeals to me, even if I am tired or running short on time or otherwise distracted. It’s just my nature to try to find things that I have dropped.

If I never go with this option, you may be wondering why I even bother considering it. I ask myself the same thing. The answer is one word—hope.

I consider not looking for something I have dropped because I am always hoping that I will take that option and spare myself the nonsense of trying to find something that is not where I think it should be. I never do. But I always hope that I will.

Hope also comes into play with the second option, looking for whatever I have dropped. I always hope that I will find it where I think it should be. It never is. But I hope anyway that it will be. And if I fail to find whatever I have dropped—which happens now and then—I hope that it will turn up eventually.

On the morning I dropped the ibuprofen, I ended up lying on the bathroom floor and spinning like a Twister wheel, scanning the white-painted pine plank floor for a dark-red blip. Eventually I found it—behind the toilet.

Not only is this location in the opposite direction from where I thought the pill would be, it’s separated from that area by a half wall. I can’t begin to imagine how it got there although now it’s occurred to me that the pill I found may have been another one that I dropped on another day and did not find, meaning that the one I dropped this morning remains unfound. But—I am hoping that whichever pill I have lost, I will find it, some day.

This phenomenon also brings an element of surprise to my life. I experience this when I have lost something, given up on trying to find it, and then discover it at a later, and sometimes much later, time.

For example, about a month ago I lost a sock doing laundry. I am well past the age of believing that washers and dryers eat clothing. When I have lost something in the laundry, I know that it must be around somewhere.

Searching for the lost sock on this occasion, I made several trips up and down the steps from my room to the washer and dryer in the basement, checking each machine once, and then again, and even a third time. I also shook out and turned inside out and back again all the other clothes I had washed with this pair of socks. I finally gave up and went to bed, hoping, of course, that the sock would appear some other day.

On an afternoon about three weeks later, I came downstairs with a load of laundry, grabbed the dishtowel from the counter to include with the other things that I wanted to wash, pulled a clean dishtowel from a drawer, and put it on the counter where the dirty one had been. My daughter had been standing by the counter. “Why’s there a sock with this?” she asked, looking at the towel.

Rounding the corner down into the basement, I really didn’t take in what she had just said. But in the time that it took me to get back upstairs after starting the laundry, I had processed her comment and realized that the sock in the dishtowel was the one I had “lost” three weeks ago.

In addition to surprising me, this moment taught me something—next time I lose a sock, I will remember to check in the dishtowel drawer. And I will check there first before I trek up and down the stairs three times, hoping, of course, that it will be there.

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