A PARABLE

A parable is a story with a moral. Here's the story:

I keep an envelope in the glove box of my car, that contains my registration, insurance card, and AAA membership card.

A couple of weeks ago, on Aug. 24, I had occasion to take the envelope out of the car. A few days after that, I discovered that I had not put it back in the glove box.

Thus began the latest episode of The Great Search.

The Great Search is an ongoing reality show, as yet not broadcast, in which Yours Truly seeks to retrieve an object from its designated place - you know, the place where I always keep said object - and discover that the object isn't there. Then I look in the places where it seems that the object would likely be, since it's not in its designated place. And it's not in any of those places, either.

Then The Great Search begins, based on a single premise: the object could be anywhere.

So I move from room to room, searching. In this case, because I remembered - or thought I remembered - placing the envelope in a folder, that meant focusing my search on the piles of paper that I have all over.

I found the folder. No envelope.

Our house has only so many rooms, so after a point, The Great Search led to revisiting rooms, with the question, "Where in this room have I not looked yet?"

The Great Search typically lasts for DAYS - it quickly grows tedious, and often evokes emotional pain, driving me to prayer. It's actually pretty darn traumatizing, and depending on what I'm searching for, it can be crippling. In this case, not having my registration and insurance card meant not being able to drive, which meant not being able to do rideshare, which is what I do to pay bills. So after a few days, it became a very. Big. Deal.

Today, I took another shot at searching my office, by thoroughly going through each pile of paper.

Pile #1 - nothing. 

Pile #2 - nothing.

I gave up, until next time. I needed to get ready to leave for an appointment, even if that meant driving without my registration and insurance card.

Then I noticed this: a totally out of place Target bag...

I was no longer looking for the envelope. But I have been on a campaign recently to stack my growing collection of paper bags neatly in one spot.

So I grabbed the Target bag and pulled out the garbage bag inside it.

And there was the envelope, at the bottom of the Target bag.

That's the story. Here comes the moral.

The moral is not, "When you will stop searching for something, you will find it." Nope.

The moral is...

"Putting anything where it belongs can help you to avoid losing other things, because in the one thing that is your life, everything connects."

The end.