I turned on the laptop and realized that either I did not save them or my handy-dandy lil’ external drive (for backups), which I’ve been wrestling with recently, decided to claim its own life by restoring all my old documents, wiping clean the new ones.
I probably shouldn’t have talked disrespectfully about their more intelligent and beautiful cousin–Kindle–last week. I do believe in karma.
This reminds me of how my sister, a metalsmith recently lost one of her bracelets that she’d been working on for weeks. One second, it was in her hand; the next, it was not.
She then proceeded to spend another week looking for the darn thing, not only because she had worked so hard on it, but also because she could not believe that she could lose something so easily and so suddenly.
When randomness strikes, we question our own sanity. Our identities are on the line. (Did the bracelet even exist? Maybe it didn’t? And if it did, what happened to it? Did I check the litter box? Are my animals turning against me? Why?!)
Because we live in a heavily-insured world (which lopsidedly protects our cars more than our own health), because multiple private industries have been developed about our fears of loss and the inevitable–whether it be the loss of our bracelets, our novel draft, our loved ones–we don’t do so well with them.
There are even employed individuals at the local ROSS store who wear black jackets that say, “LOSS PREVENTION” in big bold yellow.
I like to believe that when you lose something, you make room for something else.
Not that life isn’t filled with significant loss and grief and sadness, and that those things shouldn’t be honored and obeyed, but that somehow those deficits become gaping holes in which to fill with the things we’ve always wanted or to allow some of the things we already own to have to room to grow.
(I’m buying a new laptop.)