A couple months ago, a friend of mine lost her phone.The next day, another friend lost his wallet.

These things weren’t just misplaced; they didn’t surface the next day.They hadn’t slid out of a pocket and down between the couch cushions only to be found while tidying the house.

The phone and wallet disappeared and didn’t come back.They seemed well and truly lost.We misplace things all the time.

“Keys, phone, wallet,” I repeat as a mantra before I leave the house, the office, the bar, patting my pockets to make sure we’re intact.We’ve all experienced that “Oh no, where’s my …” feeling.

We’re sure we lost some essential item and are hit with a feeling of doom so intense, it’s almost breathtaking.Then, just as quickly, that exquisite wash of relief when you find that your phone is, in fact, in the pocket of your coat — false alarm, crisis averted.

You are, for a moment, a changed person, a person who glimpsed the horror of having to call the D.M.V., and you got a last-minute reprieve.You’ll keep better track of your stuff from now on.

You never want to feel that way again.Misplacing stuff and then finding it is everyday nonsense.Losing things is rarer.

The fact that two good friends lost important things back-to-back seemed weird, like a particular type of bad luck had zeroed in on my social circle.Someone wise once advised me that when things seem strange or confusing or too symbolically weighty, we might ask ourselves, “How would I interpret this if it were a dream?” It puts some distance between us and what’s happening.

What if I had a dream in which people in my life kept losing their things? How would I interpret that?“Lose something every day.Accept the fluster / of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

/ The art of losing isn’t hard to master,” Elizabeth Bishop wrote in “One Art.” The poem begins by discussing the loss of inconsequential things like keys, then moves on to bigger losses: “three loved hou...

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Publisher: The New York Times

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