Dr. Carolyn Lee reflects on a different cliché each week. Recently, in her blog “Different Strokes for Different Folks,” she looks at the wide and wild varieties of lifestyles we can experience. This week Carolyn explores the cliché, lost and found.

Learn more about Dr. Carolyn Lee on her biography page or investigate 29 more clichés in her latest book, Keep Your Eye on the Ball And Other Clichès to Live By. 

Lost and Found

I recently wrote a blog entitled “Now You See It, Now You Don’t” in which I bemoaned the loss of my favorite rings. One was a gold band I bought in Spain forty-five years ago. The other was silver; it featured a setting of nine stones representing the planets. (The ring was obviously designed before Pluto got demoted.) I wore them to my birthday party in mid-January, and, by the next morning, they had disappeared. I looked everywhere. My friends and family looked—under the bed, between the couch cushions, in the recycling bin. Nope. I was between dismayed and despondent. I had worn those rings every day for years, and they were gone. I vowed in the blog that, if I ever found them, I’d write another blog and celebrate their reappearance in ecstatic iambic pentameter. 

Well, yesterday I FOUND THEM. You’re wondering where? In a sock drawer at the back of my closet. Yes, a sock drawer. I cannot offer an explanation. Why would my rings be in the back of my closet, much less in a sock drawer? No point in asking; no hope of answering. I have them, and I will never, ever put them anywhere but on the cut-glass ring-holder that sits on my bathroom counter. 

Now about the iambic pentameter. I looked up the definition of this verse form and was reminded that each of its lines has ten syllables, an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. I couldn’t immediately come up with an expression that conformed to that rhythm, but my thoughts did come out as “poetry”: 

I cannot think of a sweeter sound 

than these five words:

“The lost has been found.”    

Losing something valuable is a sickening experience. When you open your billfold and discover that your Visa card is missing, or you’re on your way to the airport, and you can’t find your driver’s license, or you realize that the $100 bill you were going to enclose in your grandson’s birthday card is no longer where you’re sure you put it, the experience can impact the musculoskeletal system and cause neurological disorders. Throwing up on those occasions is not uncommon. 

Losing my purse is something I’ve done a couple or three times in my real life, but I have lost my purse dozens of times in my dreams. The situation is always terribly dramatic. I am in a land far, far away when I suddenly realize that I am no longer in possession of my handbag. In that handbag are my passport, my keys, my credit cards, my cell phone, my makeup, and a lot of money. Horrors! No matter how hard I try or how thoroughly I look, I rarely find my purse before the dream ends. But that makes the moment when I wake up particularly joyous. When I open my eyes and realize I’ve just been dreaming, that my purse is right over there on my dresser, it’s all I can do to keep from leaping out of bed and dancing around the room! 

I’ve never assigned any particular meaning to these dreams, but I learned on Google that other people certainly have. Apparently, losing-a-purse dreams are commonplace. Some dream interpreters suggest that dreaming about losing a purse—especially one with a passport and credit cards in it—means you fear losing your identity. Losing makeup might indicate a fear that you are losing the mask you wear out in the world. Losing money=loss of independence. Losing keys=losing your way home. I suppose these guesses can be accurate in some cases, but, honestly, as far as I know, I have no worries about losing my identity or my mask or my independence or my way home. 

I do have to admit that I frequently dream I cannot find my way to the destination I seek. Or I cannot seem to locate the thing I desire. I turn a corner, and nothing looks familiar. I’ve said I would be there by a particular time, but I’m not going to make it. I’d call, but I can’t find my phone. I’m supposed to teach a class, but I cannot locate the classroom. I have the starring role in a play, but where is the theater? I find the theater, but I’ve misplaced my script, and I can’t remember my lines. Ah, and here’s my personal favorite: I can’t find the bathroom. Or I find it, and it doesn’t have a door. Or there’s someone already in there.  

All of these dreams involve a loss of some sort, and Google tells me that none of them is unusual. It also tells me that experts—from Freud and Jung to contemporary dream researchers—disagree on their psychological significance. They theorize that dreams can be anything from wish-fulfillment to data-sorting to problem-solving.  I choose to believe that my particular dreams don’t deserve much psychological analysis. They seem to be exaggerated reflections of the various self-induced anxieties I experience in my daily life.  

Today I choose not to think about dreams or losses at all. I choose instead to rejoice in the knowledge that my purse is on my dresser, my Visa card is in my billfold, my cell phone is in my hand, and my rings are on my fingers.  

Want to Read More? 

Check out Dr. Carolyn Lee’s blogs on her website, she features a new cliché each week or you can order her new book, Keep Your Eye on the Ball And Other Clichès to Live By. Want to know more about the woman behind the words? Read more about Carolyn here. We hope you enjoyed this article learning more about the cliché, lost and found.