Mindless

You wouldn’t imagine that getting to work with your lunch bag would be a difficult task.

For the last four years the routine has been the same. Collect back pack from utility room, insert fruit and snacks, add freshly made sandwiches and phone charger, collect lunch from fridge add mayo and insert into aforementioned bag and zip up.

With the addition of our picture lights on the hall and motion sensor lights on the stairs I am no longer faced with the option of blaring bulbs or a dark stumbling. The low level lighting is a much preferred option at the ridiculously early dark time that I am leaving the house at the moment.

My bag then nestles on the passenger seat for the five minutes that it takes to be at work and inserted into a parking place. Only, this morning I reached over to an empty seat, it would be an understatement to say that I was perplexed by this development. All manner of options then flooded into my befuddled mind about what had happened and where it could be.

A hurried trip back home never managed to shed any more light on the problem, I successfully wakened the sleeping beauty without trying and departed still bagless. At this point I reasoned that I must certainly have sat it on the ground beside the car, even though I was sure that this wasn’t the case. But was I sure, could I trust myself at all to even be out on my own without adult supervision?

Needless to say it wasn’t in the car park, it was not in the security guard’s office, it wasn’t in the hands of the man who had stolen my space during my brief trip home. It was a head scratcher for sure but the bigger issue was that I had no lunch, that was a disaster of epic proportions.

Something made me go back to the car to check once more, hoping that Harry Potter had removed his cloak of invisibility from over my lunch and we would have a good chuckle together. But no, the seat was still empty and Harry must still have been hiding. Winking at me from the rear seat was a black object, quietly and patiently waiting to be collected from where I had launched it twenty minutes earlier was the missing bag.

It may have been the time of the day, it may be the time of my life or it may just be the fact that we had an autopilot malfunction today. Whatever the reason it added a little extra seasoning to an otherwise normal morning.

Reassuringly I am not alone in this type of thing. Relaying the mornings shenanigans to a colleague allowed him match and better my story with some considerable gusto.

It reminded me of the times that I have bellowed “what were you thinking” at my son in the aftermath of an episode of stupidity. The sad truth is that he wasn’t…..thinking. It is a feature of the male of our species that we can coast through whole days and even years without actually thinking about very much at all. My erstwhile colleague said that he has spent most of his life like this.

I understand completely that living in this way is easier, the problems that thinking too much can instigate are such that we warn and chagrin people for doing it. However, it is not actually better to be ignorant of everything, even if it does greatly simplify your mind.

I am not convincing even myself today but I don’t want to be that dull, forcing ourselves to have big thoughts is important. We are not here forever or for nothing and remaining under the radar cannot be a long term goal.