I recently lost my pen case. My six beloved fountain pens—the ones I carry everywhere—were gone. Some were given to me by dear friends as gifts, and I’ve used all of them to journal and start my day, every day, every morning, for years.
I did just that when I recently went to Denver. I started my morning as always with my routine: yoga, journaling, and meditation. I packed up my stuff and headed to my client’s office for meetings. And when I opened my bag to pull out one of my pens to take notes, the pen case was not there.
I was certain I’d left them in my hotel room. Distracted, I asked my client if I could pause a second to call the hotel. I called the front desk twice, asked housekeeping to check again, and quietly (OK, not so quietly) decided someone else must have missed them. The staff said the pens weren’t at the hotel.
I spent the next eight hours distracted, angry, and absolutely certain that when the hotel checked, they didn’t check thoroughly.
I spent the whole flight home that night searching online for the pens I had lost. Many were special editions, no longer available. I sent another note to housekeeping, offering a small reward. It’s the first thing I told my husband when he called to see how I was doing.
I got home late that night, feeling sad and angry and wishing I could just get in that room and find them myself. I decided to dump my bag out on the living room floor, one last time, to make sure I didn’t miss them. They weren’t in there. But yet there was something bulky in the lining that I couldn’t identify. I knew it was my wallet. It was. AND it was my pen case. In a pocket I never use for them.
I was embarrassed. I was relieved. (I even got teary). And I was humbled.
The loss distracted me all day. My nervous system stayed on alert, scanning for something missing, and I admit with a little shame, maybe for someone to blame. It reminded me how easily certainty can masquerade as truth and how quickly I was committed to the story that I just knew what had happened.
Ugh. I put that pen case in the same spot in my backpack every single time it’s used. Except this time. For some reason, I put it in a different pocket. And for some reason, I just couldn’t entertain the idea that it was my doing that the pen case was gone.
Sometimes the thing we’re convinced is gone isn’t gone at all. It’s just hiding in a place we haven’t looked—a thought pattern, an old assumption, a part of ourselves we stopped checking.
I was so embarrassed that I sent a text to my friend and client, who was also checking in on me that night, knowing I was so upset at the loss. I had to admit to her that I found them. But you know what? It took days for me to admit to the hotel that I had them. I felt ashamed that I was certain they weren’t looking hard enough because, of course, it had to be me, not them, right? I was eating humble pie.
Try this the next time that pit-in-your-stomach feeling shows up:
- Pause the search. Stop moving, even briefly.
- Name what’s happening. “I’m feeling anxious and scared that I lost something precious to me. My brain’s looking for safety through certainty.”
- Soften your focus. Breathe slowly and widen your gaze. Gain just a little perspective to open up to seeing the situation with a wider aperture.
- Then look again—gently and calmly.
Find your center first, before you look for what you perceive is lost. Humility lives there, in the quiet space between panic and perspective–the moment you realize what’s lost might not be the thing you’re frantic to find, but your sense of calm.
