There is a lot to love about a carrot, I’ll tell you. I used to eat them in mass quantities. So much so that I would leave orange sweat stains under the pits of my white t-shirts back in those days. You would think with all those carrots, I would have the vision of Superman. But, I cannot see near or far without my glasses. The world is a blur despite my old carrot habit.
Maybe the reason they didn’t help my eyesight is that they are 88% water. As it turns out, the whole “carrots improve your eyesight” is vastly overblown. There are several scientific articles written on this, but take my word for it. I am walking proof who needs glasses every waking moment.
But I don’t wish to go into all the details about carrots, like the fact that they were first grown in Afghanistan, starting around 900 AD. At least, that is the first “recorded” mention of a carrot. I wonder what rabbits did before then.
The story I wish to tell today is about a differently spelled carrot. The carat. It’s about a woman, Mary Grams, in Canada, who found her diamond ring after losing it in 2004. She was working in the garden, pushing her hands into that dirt, as gardeners do. And when she had finished her work, she noticed she’d lost her ring. She searched. And sifted. But her efforts were fruitless. Or shall I say vegetable-less? No ring.
This story has been circulating on the internet for quite some time now.
Once she lost the ring, she kept it a secret from all but her son for over a decade. But not too long ago, her daughter-in-law discovered that secret. She was working in the garden, in the carrot patch, when she found the ring. She pulled up a lumpy carrot, and there it was, the carrot wearing the diamond proudly.
We all lose things, some of us more than others. One of my biggest faults is when I “put away” a little-used item. I select a great spot to store that “something” — a place that makes perfect sense at the time. Then, months later, when I go to retrieve the item, I cannot find where I stowed the thing for the life of me.
But for most of us, the “losing” is simply misplacing. We go to find our keys and can’t. Our glasses were right here just a few minutes ago, and now they’ve disappeared. I was just using the scissors. Where the heck are they?
This happens as a direct result of being mindless or distracted. We are not paying attention to our actions, as we think other thoughts. Perhaps we are reliving a past conversation, something we wished we had said or didn’t. Or maybe we’re thinking about something troubling on the news. It makes no difference. We are not where we should be, and we lose our wallets.
Sometimes, though, we lose bigger things. Life things. Sometimes, this is no fault of our own. Sometimes it is.
Whatever the case may be concerning our lost thing, we always seem to want to find it again. The loss may come back to us unexpectedly, like finding a diamond ring on a fat carrot in the garden. Other times, we never see that part of our lives. Not ever again.
We can only hope that whatever comes next will be in our best interest. Maybe finding something new and better. Or possibly discovering a different path. And so we lose. And then we find.
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“It’s so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent
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“Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s part of what it means to be alive.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
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“Anyone who has lost something they thought was theirs forever finally comes to realize that nothing really belongs to them.”
― Paulo Coelho
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Carrot. Carat. Care it. We do.
