Where is 154W?

Things are not always where you expect them to be. 

Tonight I lost my locker at the gym.

After yoga I returned to the locker room and went to the area where I thought my locker was – locker #8 as I recalled. However, my key tag read “154W” and I assumed I’d picked up someone else’s key from the yoga studio floor.  I thought “I know, I’ll just go over to 154W and wait for that person to show up with my key.” 

I walked around the locker room twice and found no locker marked “154W.” I returned to the yoga studio imagining a woman standing there looking down in a befuddled state at a key reading “8W” – I found no such thing.

I went to the front desk and had a woman who worked at the gym go and look for 154W.  She couldn’t find it…She fetched the master key and went to locker 8 and opened it.  That wasn’t my locker.  Right next to #8, sandwiched between 8 and 14 actually, was locker 154W!

This defies all sense of the order of things. Kind of like this “dog.”

This experience got me thinking about looking for things; we can look for something using rational thought and even a solid process in some instances and not find it.  It seems plausible that some things can be found only once we abandon those rational thoughts and processes. 

What I’m applying this to is dating.  I went full throttle into the online dating world.  I was on three sites and had a lot of single dates (you go on only one date and realize that person isn’t your cup of tea).  It made me learn a lot about myself, other people and dating in general.  It was like a crash course in dating.  I had a process, a spreadsheet, and a sense of adventure.  There was some good luck; I found a few good guys.

It was while I wasn’t looking that I came across someone organically (i.e. not through a website). It defied my sense of order but it’s been amazing. I would have never looked between locker number 8 and 14 to find number 154…