Down the Drain

Whenever I am rinsing my contact lens, I always close the drain. Except today, when for some reason I didn't and the lens slipped out of my hand and down the drain. By the time I reacted, it was gone and I was not going to do the plumbing thing in hopes of finding it.

It was disappointing and a pain, since I wear gas permeable lens and will have to make arrangements to get a replacement. It's also no fun for me to wear one and not both, because it makes my vision weird. But it was gone, so I have been doing the best I can.

I could have pitched a fit and groused about my lost contact all day. I could have fussed when I called my ophthalmologist and got some random answering machine response instead of a real person. I could have messed with the plumbing and gotten all worked up about trying to locate a tiny contact.

But it was just a contact lens. It slipped from my fingers and was lost. It's a manageable inconvenience and will be rectified in the next week or so. It's a momentary blip in a life that's filled with more important things.

Sometimes things slip and go down the drain. Maybe it's a friendship, or a dream, or an opportunity, or something we thought we really needed in life. When it's gone, we have choices to make. We can try to find it, replace it, or just let it go and live with its absence. But whatever action we take, we have to realize the other things in our life that matter. Sometimes by focusing on what we have instead of what we've lost, we keep our lives in perspective.

I lost a contact, not my sight. I put on my glasses and went to the movies. It was a good day after all.