Lost & Found

About three months ago, I was exiting my bathroom on an average summer evening, having just finished getting ready for bed. I was in my pajamas, carrying the day clothes I had just changed out of.

I entered my bedroom and shifted my laundry in my arms, preparing to put it in a basket. The movement dislodged my Apple AirPods Pro from a pocket of my jeans that I’d forgotten they were in. They fell to the wooden floor of my bedroom with a clatter. The lid of the case popped open, and both AirPods flew out like little white blurs.

My room was not very tidy at the time. Boxes and piles of random things sat around on my floor. I saw where one AirPod—the left one—landed and retrieved it from the pile it had fallen into. Then I looked around for the right one. I thought it had fallen close to the left one, but it was nowhere to be seen.

Apple devices have a location tracking feature that allows users to find them quickly using a pinging sound that you can trigger from another device. I knew my AirPods case had that feature, but I was holding the case in my hand after having retrieved it and the left AirPod from the floor—the location feature wouldn’t do me any good. So I gave up trying to find the lost right AirPod that evening and went to bed.

The next morning, I remembered something crucial: each AirPod can also be found individually using the same location technology. Hoping the missing AirPod’s battery hadn’t died overnight due to its separation from its case, I tried pinging it with my iPhone.

Nothing. It could have been anywhere in my messy room. I decided to look for it again later.

“Later” turned into months of searching without finding. I felt like my bedroom floor had swallowed the earbud like a black hole. I would periodically have bursts of motivation to look around my room, root around in my closet (which had been open at the time), go through piles and boxes, and even search under my bed or dresser in case it rolled under one of them.

No luck.

For months I used only the left AirPod. I went on walks, listened to music, worked at my day job, attended virtual meetings, and vacationed at the beach with one AirPod.

I had three options to resolve this issue. Two were simple: I could pay Apple $90 to replace the missing AirPod, or I could just buy the new generation of AirPods when they came out in early September.

Those two solutions had their own problems, though. $90 felt like too much to pay for a replacement, especially since I knew the missing AirPod was in my room…somewhere. Also, the new generation of AirPods would have cost $250 to buy. That was a slightly more attractive option because of the nature of the upgrade, though I also refuse to buy AirPods unless they’re on sale. Unfortunately, I also soon learned from numerous YouTube reviews that these new AirPods were released to mixed reception regarding design and sound quality. Many reviewers I saw planned to stick with their second-generation AirPods Pro (the version I have) instead of the new third-generation ones.

This led me to the final option. It was a simultaneously simple and complicated solution, yet it was the one I chose: find the missing earbud, whatever it took.

“Whatever it took” turned out to be an almost complete clean-up of my bedroom. There’s nothing quite like experiencing the absence of a necessary (and expensive) possession to motivate me to clean up a messy space.

I’ve never been a tidy person when it comes to personal living spaces. I tend to set random things down on random surfaces. I tend to keep mail, papers, and boxes instead of throwing them away or storing them. I tend to not have “a place” for possessions and just leave them somewhere convenient.

Over the years, these habits have led to clutter buildup and lost possessions. It’s something I’m working on, because my messy habits often contribute subtly to my anxiety issues.

This past Saturday, I dedicated the whole afternoon to decluttering my bedroom. I set out numerous boxes and bins to sort things into. I trashed and recycled lots of papers and old mail. I put items I planned to give away or keep into separate boxes. I dug through my piles and boxes of random stuff like my life depended on it.

This project wasn’t something I did specifically to find my AirPods; finding them would just be a bonus. My goal was to finally clear some space in my room so I can redefine it and use it more intentionally.

I spent several hours cleaning up and organizing. I got tired, but I kept moving because I didn’t want my mental and emotional inertia to stop me.

One of the last things I sorted through was a blue fabric bin that held numerous paper items and random possessions. I dug around, fishing out recycling, trash, and things I was keeping. Then lo and behold…in the bottom corner of that blue fabric bin, I saw something familiar. A white, earbud-shaped something.

AirPods reunited!

My lost right AirPod! Somehow, it had landed in this bin when it shot out of its case, and I had never searched that bin thoroughly enough to find it.

I stared at it for a moment in disbelief. Then I grinned widely as I picked it up and held it. I went and showed it to my roommate, who knew I’d lost it. I even laughed a bit, I was so happy.

This monthslong searching process has felt a lot like a parable of Jesus to me: like the widow and the lost coin or the good shepherd who finds the lost sheep. In both instances, the searcher rejoices that the precious lost possession has been found and invites others to celebrate with them.

Now, this isn’t a perfect analogy. But when I found my lost AirPod, for the rest of the day I felt like I was experiencing a tiny taste of the joy God feels when He welcomes back into His presence someone who was previously lost in sin and darkness.

My AirPods are valuable to me. I use them daily, and I paid a decent amount of money for them. I didn’t want to spend more money to solve the problem when I knew all I had to do was be patient and willing to search thoroughly until I found them. In a way, going for months using only one AirPod served as a daily reminder that it was worth it to find the lost one.

I played the long game to find this tiny earbud. And now I rejoice in getting it back! It’s truly wonderful to find something valuable that has been missing for a long time.