Just discovered I lost something today. Should have noticed it was missing during the move.
I hate that feeling: like you're so close to recovering your lost possession but you can't. The feeling that you are unsure of what happened to your lost possession and you'll never know what REALLY happened.
You have a vague FEELING of what might have happened, but you can't go back in time to confirm or deny that feeling.
You scour what you have, but then you don't find it there, yet you still scour the same spot. Just to find it. Just to eliminate that one thought that nags you, a thought you can't confirm: that you might have thrown it away and is buried in some landfill, that you might have dropped it somewhere you'll never return to, or that it is hidden somewhere in your house and you'll pleasantly rediscover it later in life when it doesn't matter anymore.
I hate this nagging feeling of a lost possession because it is a reminder that I don't have control over my life. That these objects, that remind me of my identity, my ideas, ideas that might lead me to success. That the moment I lose these objects, these mnemonic devices, I forget my ideas and then I lose part of myself and then I lose a great opportunity.
But that's just not how life works. Things just come at you randomly and you can choose to dodge the things you don't like or you can grab something and keep it. However, just as you grab that thing you like and might have obsessed over, it can be quickly snatched away from you forever.
Those things I lost, which represented an idea I wanted to do, I could have enacted on them, but I didn't. Now they're gone, but I still have other things to work on.
Those things I lost, which represented some principle I should stick to, they're gone, but that doesn't make me a worser person. I still have other principles to stick to and I don't need an object for them.
Things come and go and what they leave behind is a smear of its effect on you and if the effect is powerful enough, it will move you.
Sometimes an object represents a person we wish to be instead of accepting the person we have become.
So let us not obsess over the presence of something, but appreciate the effects they leave behind.