Missing
You know how, when you're late for a meeting or a lunch date or something, and you finally get there and you explain to the other person that you couldn't find your keys, and how many places you searched, and where you finally located them, and this person smiles and nods, sort of a sage smile, and says, "Yeah, it's always in the last place you look"?
Maybe I worry too much about this sort of thing, but isn't that kind of a dumb thing to say? Isn't it as a matter of course always going to be in the last place you look? Would it be in the second place you look but you keep on looking in five more places anyway? Is it me?
Anyway. I misplaced something yesterday so this was on my mind.
Yesterday was a strange day already, before this. I had to do a lot of research and filling in forms from stuff that happened several years ago, and it was boring and I wasn't even getting paid. I don't mind working for free if it's fun, sometimes, but if it's boring I want a good reason to be bored.
Then I got that bug up my rear to write what I wrote about gay people and judgment and lack of agendas, etc., and it just left me sort of off. I don't do it often but once in a while I briefly imagine I can save the world, or at least explain it, so there's a letdown.
That's what I was feeling when I suddenly realized I'd lost my soul.
I didn't panic, at least not at first. I figured it had to be around here somewhere, but after a few minutes I started getting nervous.
See, losing your soul is not like losing your hair or losing your temper. It's not like losing your place or losing your balance or losing your appetite. It's not even like losing weight. I mean, a soul is important. Lots of people think so.
I went upstairs and asked my wife. "Julie, have you seen my soul?"
"Try the sock drawer," she said, but no luck.
John claimed he wouldn't know my soul from a hole in the ground and anyway why do I always blame him when something's missing?
I looked hard at the dog.
Strider's been known to eat some strange things, including my underwear, but what would a dog want with my soul? It's not even a great soul. It's not a particularly old soul, or a wise soul, or even a soulful soul. But it's all I got.
On top of that, I was a little fuzzy on some technical questions. What if the Rapture happened? Or I got hit by a car and died? Would I go to heaven without a soul? I could picture arriving at the Pearly Gates and starting to go in when this alarm goes off and St. Peter holds up his hand.
"Hang on a sec, buddy. You don't have a soul. No soul, no admission. Them's the rules."
I imagined myself playing dumb, looking around with a stunned expression on my face. "Dude, where's my soul? I mean, it was here when I died, I remember..." but I guess if they can spot a missing soul they'll have no trouble figuring out this jerk is lying through his teeth.
It got scary. I tried lots of things. I looked through the Bible, but I couldn't find anything about Lost Souls. I tried eating soul food. I listened to soul music. Nothing.
I wondered if maybe there was a place to go for help, a holy man or a temple or a mystic or something, where you walk in and pay your money and get re-souled, but I doubted it. I think probably you get one soul and you're supposed to take care of it.
I ran over prayers in my head. "Hi, God, it's me, Chuck. Listen: You remember that time I couldn't find my razor? And I was late for a job interview, and I had three days' growth? Hahahaha. Man, that was funny, wasn't it? OK, well if you liked that story, listen to this..."
You're in bad shape without a soul. Pick up a book of poetry and it's just words, meaningless. Stare at pictures of your family and they look like strangers. It feels...weird.
Steven Wright did a comedy bit once, where he talked about moving into a new house and finding a light switch that did nothing. No lights, no machines, no nothing. Every day he'd flip that switch, over and over, 30, 40 times a day, and nothing ever happened. A month later he got a letter from a lady in New Jersey.
"Cut it out," she said.
That's how I felt, like a light switch that did nothing. It was dark, man.
But there was a happy ending. I found my soul eventually. I found it by figuring out how I misplaced it.
See, regardless of how well-intentioned I am, regardless of how much I think I'm basing an opinion on solid ground and attempting to sway minds away from hate or indifference or something in between, regardless of the goodness of my heart and the purity of my thoughts (sorry, just making myself laugh here), once I start finding specks in eyes I tend to forget my log.
This has nothing to do, by the way, with disagreeing or having passion about an issue or feeling I know what's right and wrong. It has everything to do with my heart, though, and the places I go when I start to think I know the answers and you don't.
Nothing has changed. I still feel the same way. I still will argue with you until I'm blue in the face. I just might try to refrain from calling you on judging when I'm judging you for judging and I have my own log sticking out of my dumb eye.
I'm pretty comfortable with this log. I work on it from time to time, but it's sort of familiar. It reminds me about humility, and hard work up ahead, and grace, and forgiveness. It reminds me I have a soul around here somewhere.
I found it right where I left it, as it turns out. Which should have been the first place I looked, of course, but I'm just relieved it was the last.
5:54:50 PM 
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