Have You Seen My Glasses?

“For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” Mark 8:36-37


Days often begin at my house with a question. Today it was, “Have you seen my glasses?” my wife asked, even before I’d poured my coffee. Sleep-drugged, I sarcastically replied, “Where did you leave them?” Such provocation is not good in the early mornings!

So we began searching for the lost glasses. Women are not logical like men. Ace Hardware sells glasses for $ 3.99. Men love hardware stores, so why not have a couple of dozen pairs lying around? No big deal to lose a few. We looked everywhere. No luck. Without coffee, it’s hard to even find yourself, much less glasses. It’s inhumane.

I soon gave up this frustrating game of hide and seek. Not her. First, rip the bed apart. Nope. Then rummage through the trash can. Not there. Try the washing machine. Only wet clothes. The longer the search, the shorter the temper. Caffeine deprivation will do this.

I began to think of creative hide and seek games with her glasses. Men are perverse like this. Should I hide ‘em in the fridge next to the beer? Men spend lots of time in refrigerators. Maybe the dirty clothes bin? How about the make-up drawers…one could lose a body in there without detection. Or in my pocket, placing them on the table in plain view at the appropriate time. I could be a hero, even without coffee. Get it?

We lose things all the time. Once I lost my glasses, finding them on my head when I got into the shower. I’ve lost a lot of other things, too. So have you. I once had a photo of myself on the beach, looking pretty buff. I was 48. Somehow the picture vanished from the table as the buff disappeared from my body. “Have you seen my picture, who moved it?” I asked. “Not me,” was the reply. Not-Me lives here. “But it was a picture of my finest hour,” I protested.

I recently found my ‘finest hour picture’, used as a book mark. I was humiliated. “Who put my picture in this book?” I demanded. Don’t-Know lives here, too.

John is a friend of mine. He was at UGA on a swimming scholarship. He kept a picture of himself, Speedo and all, emerging from the pool looking Olympian. He lost his head over a woman, married her but lost the scholarship. Love will sometimes distract a man. Good wives overcome the temporal benefits of a swimming scholarship.

Paul, my brother-in-law, RIP, lost his hearing. He searched for a cure but found none. We thought he’d found a good women, though. When he’d visit he was always calling out, “Hello Dolly, Hello Dolly.” We later discovered he was trying to see if his hearing had returned.

Most of our generation has lost youthful appearances. Age tends to be an enemy of youth. We’re looking in a lot of places to find Ponce de Leon’s Fountain of Youth, but alas…even King Tut ended up dust. We keep on lookin’.

My friend Wayne, has good advice for finding lost things. “Simple,” he says. “Just retrace your steps and you’ll find it where you left it.” Sounds like a plan, but who can even remember where they’ve been? You and I should stick to real estate, Wayne. It can’t be lost, unless it’s financed. But that’s another story.

Our nation appears to have lost things too. In the inordinate pursuit of wealth, security and possessions, we may have misplaced our collective soul somewhere along the road most traveled. Can we find it again? What steps must we retrace to get out of the ditch and back on the road to sanity?

But back to my wife’s question, “Have you seen my glasses?” Were they found? Yes. Where? In the cabinet with the washing detergent, exactly where one would have expected to find them! This is encouraging to us, individually and collectively, we who have lost our treasures. Keep looking.

It’s proper to end as we began, with a question. So I asked myself, “What would I give in exchange for my own soul?” And you?

Bud Hearn
June 3, 2010