Do We Ever Lose Anything?

Not If It Was Never Lost

In May, I lost two things. In September, I found them both. Yes, I looked for them, but when I couldn’t find them, I considered them both gone and replaced them. After all, they were only a garden trowel and a paring knife.

I found the knife after our September family gathering. Putting things away after it was over, I saw it among the plastic utensils, misplaced during our May family gathering.

I found the garden trowel buried where I had been planting in the spring. While weeding, I saw a red thing sticking out of the ground and wondered what kind of plant it was. Curious, I dug around it with my new trowel and found the old one.

It was a simple reminder that nothing is or ever can be lost. The law of thermal dynamics assures us that all the energy, also known as matter, has already been created and never leaves. It simply changes forms.

However, these last eighteen months may make us feel as if we have lost or misplaced something. Something much more valuable than a trowel and a knife.

Sometimes it appears as if we have lost the ability to listen to each other without judgment. Perhaps it shows up in blame or division instead of cooperation—anger instead of understanding. In an “either you are for me, or you are against me” mentality.

But if energy can not be lost, how much more true must it be that the qualities of the Divine, God, The Great Mystery, the Infinite, can not be lost.

Can the qualities of love, faith, hope, kindness, joy, and purpose be lost? Perhaps they can be misplaced or buried in fear and ignorance, but they are not lost and they can be found again.

But how?

First, by accepting that nothing is ever lost. Not people, places, or things, and not the qualities that are the essence of the Infinite Divine Intelligence that exists or we wouldn’t. Perhaps we can’t see It, but we definitely can recover and maintain our awareness of Its presence.

All this is true, whether it is a thing or a person. They are not gone. When butterflies and birds migrate, have we lost them? Of course not. They are some place else.

So instead of despairing over what is happening in the world, or our lives, from losing something as small as a garden trowel to the tragedy of world events, let’s rejoice over the fact that love, kindness, courage, faith, hope, joy are not lost.

Because we know that the more we focus on and express these qualities ourselves, the faster we dissolve that which has hidden them from us and transform our lives and the lives of others.

Let’s act not from fear and anger, but from compassion and understanding. Let’s expect to find what we thought we lost because we haven’t. Nothing is ever lost—transformed maybe—but not lost.

What have you found that you thought you had lost?

In the economy of nature nothing is ever lost. I cannot believe that the soul of man shall prove the one exception. — Gene Stratton-Porter

Once it is accepted that nothing can change, that nothing can come out of nothing, and that nothing is ever lost, then nature must consist of infinitesimal blocks that can join and separate again. — Jostein Gaarder

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