#losingthings

I lost my bus pass last week before I was about to get on the bus. I was annoyed at the inconvenience of the situation, but oh well. Big whoop, right? Just get over it, and buy a new one, I told myself. And so I did. I paid UBC a $35 replacement fee. But it wasn’t even about losing some flimsy card that grants me bus rides. I have a horrible history of losing things. In the past, I’ve lost a couple cameras, phones, ID’s, and the list goes on. It’s not only costing me money, but it’s putting my dignity at stake too.

Whether it’s something as small as losing that one pen that I always use in class because I like the way it looks and writes on paper (I know you have your go-to pen, don’t deny it), or something more substantial like my cell phone that I put down for that brief moment on the counter at the bar that one night (which I apparently added to the $7 million worth of phones that are lost around the world each day)—it’s these seconds of carelessness that overtime add up to the aftermath of losing a personal item: a long, agonizing period of solitude and self-reflection where I am pulling my hair out trying to figure out, “where the hell did it go?!”

Face it, when we lose things, we lost a part of ourselves too. Sometimes it’s easy to shrug it off, but sometimes it isn’t. It puts a damper on our mood and then we’re left with nothing but that feeling of remorse, wishing we were more careful with our belongings. So how exactly do we deal with these feelings of guilt?

For one, we have to reach the understanding that it's completely normal to instill meaning into our personal belongings. There’s nothing wrong with you, so don’t feel embarrassed if you’ve happened to admit at one point in time that your smart phone is your life (or at least thought it), because you don’t know what you would do if you lost it. I mean, imagine going about a normal day in your life without your phone comfortably in your pocket or by your side on the desk you work at. Something just doesn’t feel right, and it’s almost as if a piece of your identity is missing when you can’t instinctively reach for it to check your messages or look at the time. It’s slightly pathetic to think how dependent we are with our cell phones, but at the same time, we’ve reached a day and age in technology where we need our cell phones just as much as we need food. While that bagel and coffee helps fuel our bodies in the morning, our mobile phones serve to fuel our brains, providing us easy access to the knowledge we need to get through our day.

 Once we understand this process, we have to learn to let go. It’s the same for budding relationships, if you give your significant other your all—every ounce of emotion, effort and strength you normally would keep to maintain yourself as a functional, sane human being on this planet, but all of a sudden your alleged lover decides to cut ties and walks away, what happens? They not only leave you, but they take away everything you gave them too because you didn’t know how to be a little a selfish. To put it simply, never give more than you receive. That way, the next time you hear yourself saying, “my iPhone is my life,” (which is a true statement I’ve heard from friends) whether it is through the social media apps you use, photos you take, or that event you marked in your calendar to help you remember that 5 o’clock meeting—your phone is still an object separate from you. And most importantly, you’re still distinctly you, phone or no phone in hand.

And if you need that extra esteem boost, here's my personal choice of an inspirational quote for your day: