lost & found

If you ever lost something that was really important to you, you know how sad that can make you feel.
If you ever found that thing after you convinced yourself that it was gone for good, you also know how happy that can make you feel.
I lost and found one such thing yesterday, and started crying the moment I found it. The moment I realized it was gone, I couldn't concentrate on anything else. The people around me, my surroundings, all turned into a blur. Someone was speaking, but I faded out so much so that I don't remember much of what he said during those ten or fifteen minutes. I walked home, listening to songs that I listen to when I feel like crying, counting the steps until I arrived home. It sounds silly, considering all the troubles people can go through in life, but sometimes you need small things to get you through tougher times so you invest much more meaning into them than perhaps you should. The consequence of that, unfortunately becomes apparent when you lose that thing. You feel like you lost all the things you believed that thing stood for too, and if the thing itself was valuable without all the meaning you invested in it, the loss becomes all that much harder to deal with.
All the while I thought the Thing had disappeared forever, I imagined looking down and seeing it lying on the floor by my feet. So I did, but it wasn't there.
By the time I reached the "acceptance" level of dealing with my loss, I looked down below my chair to see that the Thing was lying on the floor, beside my feet, just like I had imagined.
And then I started crying because as I usually do, I invested a lot more meaning to this discovery than any other person probably would have. But I still stick with my initial symbolism, and know that finding the Thing has a greater meaning than just finding the Thing.
It's the same with life. Sometimes we lose things. Opportunities, chances, other things. It's very hard to deal with it at the time we lose them, and sometimes we can't find them like I found the Thing yesterday, and maybe that's ok and we need to learn how to let Things go.
But when you find something that you think you lost, that is one of the best feelings in the world.