It's a strange thing when something you own goes missing. While it may in fact still exist in some way, the fact that you can't find it makes one wonder where it goes until you find it. As a kid some of my favorite things were lost forever. For what seemed like an eternity I wished that I could get a specific Transformer. This Transformer changed from a cassette tape into a black panther. Now I know it's not the most logical choice for a robot trying to maintain a disguise, but the heart wants what the heart wants. Finally I was able to get my hands on one. I played with it endlessly until one day I did something terrible. Our house had floor vents where the heat came up. They were slatted in such a way that they could be closed to stop air from coming in, but on this day they were wide open. The thing with a slat and something shaped like a cassette is that my child brain couldn't stop itself from inserting the toy into it. I still remember the horror of realization of what I had done as the Transformer leaped from my fingers and slid into the ventilation system. I immediately tore the cover off and stuffed my little arm as far down the vent as it could go, but it was no use. My toy was lost. For weeks I would periodically check that vent, in hopes that maybe by some miracle my toy would return to me, but it never did. For all I know it's still rattling around somewhere in the old house, waiting to be discovered. Another part of me thinks that maybe at some point it simply ceased to exist and no amount of searching would ever find it.
I loaned my favorite GI Joe to someone, going against my better judgement, and when I asked for it back he said he "lost" it. Now while it's true I think he was lying in order to keep what was mine, I often wonder if that action figure exists anymore. Sure there were probably thousands of that kind made back in the day, but what happened to mine? Where did it go? With energy it's believed that it cannot be destroyed. It can only be transformed. I doubt the same rules apply to toys from my childhood. Maybe they're both sitting in some landfill. Maybe somewhere someone has them and is thankful someone like me lost them in the first place. Maybe they somehow managed to get recycled in such a way that they became something else. That's the problem with things that go missing and are never found, we just don't know. For us their existence simply stops.
If you think about all the things you've ever owned in your life and how much of it is no longer with you. Old toys, old clothes, old furniture. Things that once were so important to us are gone, usually to make way for something new. As I've gotten older I've made a point to try and give away things rather than throw away what I no longer have a need for. I'd like to believe that someone out there got a little bit more use out of it before finally having to pitch it into the garbage. I've talked about heirlooms before, which seem to fall into their own category of item, even if that classification would be hard to describe. What about older letters or old photos? At one point it was important enough to put pen to paper and record the thoughts of the moment. The moment is gone and all that remains are those words on some crumpled paper. If that paper is lost what happens to the thoughts that were associated with it? Are they both lost into that endless void where all lost things seem to go?
Maybe it's a little arrogant to think that just because we can't see something it doesn't exist anymore. Then again our reality is the only one we know so until proven otherwise we are bound by what we can interact with, so on some level it doesn't matter where it is if we can't perceive it. It's entirely possible that we're not meant to find certain things once they go missing. It's also possible that there are things in our lives that we're only meant to have for a short while before they move on to wherever they're headed. It's very much like the people who pass through our lives. They don't cease to be when they leave our lives. Maybe those inanimate objects that tumble from our grasp are off living a whole other life beyond us. I'd like to think that's possible.
