“It’s too bad you got a phone.”

“Why, Aussie? I got an old one from a friend, didn’t even have to buy a new one.”

“Because now you have to look for it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Every time we go out for a walk, Henry and I are thrilled. We rush around, we whine while you put on your sneakers and get our treats and leashes together. We’re about ready to leave, and then it starts: Where’s my phone? You go looking for it from room to room: Not in the office, not in the kitchen or by the entrance, then up the stairs to check out the bedroom and the bathroom. Meantime Henry starts snoozing.”

“It’s not as bad as all that, Auss.”

“Wait, it goes on: ‘Lori, could you call me? I can’t find my phone.’ So poor interrupted Lori calls you, you think you hear the phone ringing upstairs, so back up you go. Then you thank her, then you call yourself an idiot for losing your phone all the time. Meantime, Henry has started playing with his duckie and I’m ambushing squirrels.”

“You still hurry over when I call you, Aussie.”

“Point is, why look for something that you keep on losing? Life was much easier when you had no phone.”

Aussie and I had this conversation on Wednesday, the day after a dear friend gave me an extra phone that she had. I misplaced it 10 minutes after I brought it home. After 12 days without a phone, I can definitely attest to the fact that I need it. It fulfills an important need in my life. And—I keep on losing it.

“The world is not something to fend off,” wrote the poet Jarod Anderson. Those were words I needed to hear, said succinctly and clearly. I found them, then forgot them. Found them, lost them, found them, lost them, a bit like my phone.

Other words, too: “The great danger is to stand motionless on the bank as the river of your life rushes by.” Those are by writer Maria Popova. I’ve read them more than once, forgot them, read them again, lost them again.

It’s funny how we keep on searching for some kind of inspiration that, we believe, may make all the difference in the world. That will finally show me the true way or be my true home. That will change me. That will transform me.

Maybe that’s why I write down certain sentences from books that I read. Ha ha, I think to myself as I read at night, here it is. Isn’t this great? It’s so meaningful, so much wisdom in just a few words.

Last night I read the following Korean song verse quoted by the Nobel Prize-winning writer, Han Kang, in a book of her essays:

I may be shaken, I may be fallen, but so long as

This world holds one last drop of water

I will drink it, and sing.

Yes yes yes, chanted the internal chorus, that’s my life she’s talking about, and I dutifully brought the book to the office to copy for some future use. But it’s Friday, I’m tired, it was cold and cloudy this morning, and I felt like I wanted to fend the world off, as Anderson warned not to do, fend off writing, fend off answering phones or emails, fend off making dinner later, in fact fend off everything that’s not about sleep. Give up active participation and let life go by as if in a landscape.

Forgot the words, remembered them again, and will forget again.

I trust these words. I love all words, even as, as Anderson puts it (can’t get out of the habit of quoting folks): “[i]t often feels like wearing clothes several sizes too small.” Yes, I forget even the words of Shakespeare, Dylan, and the Bible, though till now I’ve always found them again.

One day they may not be recovered, somewhat like my old phone in the Lost-and-Found of Delta Airlines, overlooked among thousands of items by probably an undersized staff. One day all those words may also disappear due to their sheer volume, on the one hand, and a narrowed memory on the other.

But the voice inside I don’t forget. It speaks some kind of language that isn’t words exactly, more a combination of feelings and intuition. A tiny glimmer in space, to which I usually respond with a muted: Oh! As in: Now I get it, or now I understand. Those other words quoted above, more intelligent and articulate than mine, come and go, but not that internal voice.

Earlier today I talked to someone in mourning, and all I could say, after he spoke out his anguish, was: “Trust that voice inside. It’s the best teacher you got.”