The Search

How do you search for something that you had and then lost. In the case of Michael, a dog, we did both the indirect search and the direct search. The indirect search consisted of post signs around town asking for hop in finding Michael and offering a reward. The direct search consisted of driving around endlessly looking for Michael with little hope that our paths would cross. From my point of view, the indirect search was much more sensible in that the signs increased the number of people who had the chance of crossing paths with Michael. Indeed, we received several calls from people who had seen Michael and these calls gave everyone hope that Michael was surviving in the strange surroundings, and gave us a focus for our continuing direct and indirect search.

Thought for the Day: As we move through life, we often will find that we have lost something that we once had or that we are looking for something that we never had, but want. Although we can search on our own for that which we seek, we are better off enlisting the help of others. Of course, in most of our personal searches, we need to chose our helpers with a great degree of care (whereas that is not the case in looking for a missing dog). In addition, we may need to change our helpers from time to time as we move to a different level of the search. For example, in the search for Michael, we first posted the flyers all over town casting a wide net, but now that we know the areas in which he was last seen, we will post the flyers tomorrow in those areas and in the general direction beyond. In the search for whatever each of us has lost or is seeking, we to may begin by casting a wide net and then, as we eliminate areas or get new information as to the direction in which our search should move, we can leave certain areas and the helpers of those areas behind, and move into unexplored regions and do so with some new helpers and some of our original helpers.