Somehow, I’ve lost my morning slippers, which seems a hard thing to do considering the size of my house (small) and the size of the slippers (large, they’re Crocs). But let’s pause right there. I crafted that sentence as I was making my morning tea, and while doing so I looked over to the desk area just off the kitchen. There in the little nook beneath the desk where you slide a chair, I saw the slippers. You’d think, huzzah, they’re found. But no. All I saw was a disappearing essay. Until I turned the tables, and now we can unpause.

It occurred to me I could keep going with the essay in a slightly different fashion, which is how we find ourselves at this juncture. I’m going to continue on because what I learned in the search and discovery of the slippers was that I was looking in the same old places, over, and over, and over, as if retracing my route would suddenly reveal them to me. What I should have been doing was looking in the unexpected places, and asking myself, where haven’t I looked.

That tendency is probably some sort of phenomenon of psychology roughly akin to beating a dead horse. We do something, don’t get the result we expected (finding the slippers, finding the carkeys), and then do it again, except slower and more deliberately or maybe we get angry. We just have a hard time imagining all the possibilities. We get caught in our perceptions and preconceived ways. I’d like to say I’ve learned my lesson, but it’s happened too many times to believe so. Although, the slippers were revealed, and I didn’t get upset. So, maybe I have learned something. I guess a huzzah, is in order. So, huzzah.

John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver’s Tale