Lost and Found

Nothing in this world is truly "for granted," and yet how easily we take everything for that exact thing — a given, a certainty, forever ours. Flip the switch and light spills forth. Turn the tap and water flows. He will stay by my side, he will always stay. Come home and Mother will be there to care for me, tending to my needs. Tomorrow the milkman will deliver milk as he always does... So many things we file away as "for granted" that we never once feel the stirring of gratitude when they arrive. Our hearts remain unmoved.

It takes losing someone to understand. Before the loss comes — until that terrible moment — we presume everything will remain, that all will stay put. We cannot fathom our own fortune until it is too late to do anything about it. We have forgotten how to praise, how to give thanks. This forgetting is why our sorrows grow and multiply. We must cling to what we have before it slips away.

One boy, one day, decided he would live like a free bird — unbounded, untethered. No sooner thought than done. He left home, rented a room with two friends who thought exactly as he did. For the first few days, he ordered food online, nourishing himself from those delivery boxes. Life felt good. It felt right.

But how long can one stomach the heavy, spiced food from outside? The food that leaves grease on the lips and sits wrong in the belly? Now, suddenly, he craves home-cooked food — the simple, familiar kind. But who will cook it for him? He never learned. It never occurred to him that without his mother's hands preparing his meals, he would simply... not eat. The thought had never crossed his mind. But meanwhile, a mountain of dirty clothes has accumulated. Who will wash them? Mother is not here. He had grown so accustomed to receiving clean, pressed garments that he never once considered what his mother's labor meant — the work that simply cannot happen if she is absent. How strange. Why had this never dawned on him?

Good heavens, the house is in complete chaos! Dust has gathered in drifts across corners and ledges, windowsills and doorframes, on every surface of furniture. Everything is grimy, suffocating. Who will clean all this? So, all along, someone was there — working, unseen — to keep things spotless, and it never registered with him? How could he have harbored such petty, baseless grievances against his mother for all these years?

One must thank those who serve. One must remember those who bind us with love. No one is obliged to serve, obliged to love, obliged to give care or affection. The worth of a person is felt most sharply when they step away, when the distance opens. Sometimes it becomes necessary to withdraw the hand that serves — to let emptiness itself speak clearly, to make absence tell its own truth.