I’ve inadvertently laid myself down somewhere

When I worked at the Sun Theatre, I had a terrible habit of losing my phone in that large building. I would be working throughout the theater from the balcony to the basement and from the front to the back of the house. Inevitably, the phone would be inadvertently laid down in an obscure spot. Sometimes, it was a considerable amount of time before I realized that I had lost it. 

I picked up my journal recently and realized that it had been four months since the last time I had written an entry. What had happened in the span of four months? I have started noticing that I lost myself like mindlessly placing my phone down and continuing to meander through the theater. Opening that journal was like the sudden moment of realization that I no longer knew where my phone was. I remember having walked through my partner’s brain surgery and the nights of sleeping next to a hospital bed or on the couch. I remember coordinating a large community fundraiser, attending a conference for work, driving daily to radiation treatments, and keeping up with everyday life, but I can’t remember where I left myself.  

Just like with my phone, I laid myself down temporarily to relieve myself of the burden in order to care for or attend to something else. It wasn’t meant to be permanent, but then I moved on to doing and caring for other things. Time passed…four months to be exact…and I realize that I don’t know where I am any more. 

In the theater, I would use my Apple Watch to ping my phone. It was a sinking feeling when I was met with silence, signaling the phone was too far out of reach. I would begin to slowly retrace my steps, wandering back to where I had been until finally I could hear the faint ping in the distance. 

And, I wonder how to ping the me that is lost. I feel that silence as I look for myself but feel too far out of reach. I’m not sure how to find me, so I begin the slow retracing of steps, wandering back to what I know. It’s a gradual finding in the quiet, in the slow, and in the rest. I hear a faint ping in the distance. I read. I write. I color. I walk. I rest. I listen. The ping grows a little louder, and I know that I’m headed in the right direction. 

We all lay ourselves down at some point in life. It may be while chasing young children, walking through an illness, falling in love, grieving a loss, completing a project at work, or experiencing demands that pull us in all directions. The important moment comes when we realize what we have lost, and we make the conscious choice to ping our soul, slowly retracing steps back to what we know.