nothing is ever really lost
The day she misplaced her engagement ring, Lotte Jeffs realised her lifelong habit of losing things had a deeper meaning than mere carelessness. She thinks back to all the things she’s loved and lost, and discovers the art of letting go
A knack for misplacing things? There may be more to it than carelessness.
Iknew I’d lose my engagement ring, and I did. I took it off at the gym, put it in the front pocket of my backpack where I keep my keys and small change, and forgot about it. I pulled out my keys to unlock my bike at the train station, and I’m guessing it’s there that the symbol of my eternal love for my fiancée found itself a new home – in the gutter, or perhaps on the finger of some lucky passer-by. Or, yes, maybe a dog ate it, or a bird, or perhaps the man who plays the accordion outside the station proposed to his lover with it. Whatever, it’s gone; don’t rub it in.
The average person misplaces up to nine items a day, or roughly 200,000 things in their lifetime, and spends around 10 minutes each day searching for keys, paperwork or their mobile, according to a UK study of 3,000 people. It’s reassuring to know I’m not alone in losing things, but the difference with me is that I never find them. Ever since I was a child, I’ve had a preternatural ability to lose items that are precious to me. My school years were punctuated by major disappearances: my clarinet, my prized Carhartt hoodie, my final textiles piece (it was a crappy patchwork quilt, if anyone’s seen it?).
Most of the time, I can conjure up some kind of pseudo-moral reason for why I lost the thing in the first place. In the case of my most recent indiscretion, I decided there was an important lesson to be learnt. My fiancée and I had agreed not to give each other engagement rings; we decided to save the money for the wedding bands. Then one lunchtime, as I was browsing, I stumbled across a nice, simple, rose-gold, diamanté-encrusted ring. “I’ll just buy it for myself and we can call it my engagement ring,” I thought. It turned out that whatever higher power is looking out for me in such matters had other ideas, and lo, the ring vanished from my possession via a series of bad decisions and general carelessness to prove that I should never have bought myself a ring (what was I thinking!) or have gone against the decision we had made as a couple. It was an expensive “learning moment” for sure, but the moral narrative made it easier to get over. Plus, I’d only had it for two weeks – not long enough to develop what psychologists call the “attachment” to an object that entangles it with your sense of self, which makes losing it more of a crisis.
My fiancée very sweetly offered to buy me back the same ring. But trying it on again in the shop, it didn’t feel right. I didn’t want it back. I had let it go, and along with it I’d let go of that rash, independent aspect to my personality that led me to buy the ring in the first place.
Something similar happened a few months ago when I left my gym kit on the train: box-fresh Nikes, an Ivy Park tracksuit and an LA Lakers baseball cap. When I got a call the following week to tell me the kit had been found and was residing
“Psychoanalyst Abraham Brill said, ‘We never lose what we really want,’ but then, he probably never left a Helmut Lang blazer in a bar”
in the lost-property office, I couldn’t bring myself to pick it up. I was over it. I wasn’t the person with the Ivy Park tracksuit anymore – I’d moved on.
I lose things so frequently that I’ve consolidated the seven stages of grief into three. First is the sinking recognition that the item is no longer with me. Then there’s the head-in-hands annoyance with myself, the frantic retracing of steps and rummaging through bags. And finally comes a calm acceptance that it doesn’t really matter, it’s just “stuff” and I must have lost it for a reason, even if that reason is to learn how to take better care of my belongings.
My annual travel card, an Issey Miyake paper fan, my work pass (twice), my debit card, two pairs of earrings and my favourite fountain pen are just some of the things that have fallen through the cracks of my ownership in the past few months. The reason, on the whole, that this happens is that I’m never entirely focused. My mind is always multitasking; at any given moment, I’m thinking about work, family, what to have for dinner, wedding plans – all while reading emails and scanning Instagram. It’s not that I don’t care about my things, I’m just more tuned into my internal world than my external, material possessions.
What is hard to reconcile is that I’m so organised in every other aspect of my life. My home and work desks are always tidy, I never miss a deadline or forget important information, yet when it comes to keeping hold of stuff, I’m an absolute scatterbrain. Some argue that being “a loser” is a genetic disposition. In a study published in the journal Neuroscience Letters, researchers found that the majority of people surveyed about forgetfulness and distraction had a variation in the dopamine D2 receptor gene, which makes them more prone to losing things. My mum, it must be said, is a bigger disaster than me in this area and we’ve spent much time together returning to cafes and parks on the hunt for her missing glasses. So, yes, I do think my genes are partly to blame.
Psychoanalyst Abraham Brill once said, “We never lose what we really want,” but then, he probably never left a Helmut Lang blazer behind in a bar. However, when I consider that I’ve never lost my passport – and, given my track record, this is significant – I think I understand what he means. My passport isn’t just an object, it represents my ability to explore the world and enrich my life with experiences. It’s the item in my possession that I’m most careful with because losing it would matter hugely. I’m hoping the same logic will apply to my wedding band when I get it. The ring will signify something far more valuable than the object itself. It’s a meaning we really want to hold on to.
Nothing puts this into sharper focus than losing a loved one. The loss of material possessions pales in comparison. My cousin Billie, who was like a sister to me, died of a brain tumour at the age of 31. Three weeks after her death, I left my partner of 10 years. I walked out of the house we owned together one night with just my passport, wallet and a change of clothes. If life went on without Billie, it’d sure as hell go on without my Nespresso machine and all the other stuff I’d come to rely on.
Being a habitual “loser” meant I was accustomed to leaving things behind by mistake and then desperately trying to retrieve them. But this was different – it was the first time I’d ever knowingly walked away from my possessions. After Billie’s death I realised I could replace everything I owned, but I could never replace her. It made me think about all the years I was wasting sticking out a bad relationship. Nothing would bring Billie back, but I could get my own life back. And, happily, by leaving my ex that night, I did.
Over the past few years, I’ve tried all sorts of techniques to stop losing stuff. I have a special shelf in my bedroom where I put all the things I frequently misplace so I can keep tabs on them. I do mental checklists when leaving anywhere – keys, phone, bag, wallet – and I try not to daydream when travelling on public transport. Yet, I still arrive home from work missing at least one thing.
Losing stuff is annoying. It’s an inconvenience and, more often than not, an expense. Losing people is a tragedy, something that shakes you to the core and changes your whole perspective on life. But loss, even the most profound kind, has a purpose – it creates the space to find something new. In my case, a tragic loss led me to discover real happiness and fall in love with someone who’s kind enough to ask me constantly if I’m sure I’ve “got everything”. And now, regardless of what I may have lost along the way, the answer is always yes.