I recently watched someone search for her phone.

She checked her handbag first, with the brisk confidence of someone expecting the matter to be resolved immediately. It was not.

She checked again.

This time she removed several objects: a wallet, keys, sunglasses, a small packet of tissues and something wrapped in a receipt. The phone remained missing.

She looked on the table. Then beneath it.

“Where is my phone?”

I was about to tell her when I noticed that she was holding it.

Not absent-mindedly tucked beneath her arm, nor concealed among the objects she had removed from the bag. It was in her left hand, plainly visible, while her right continued the search.

I looked at the phone.

Then at her.

She looked at me.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

This was perhaps unkind, but by then I had become curious about how the situation would resolve itself.

She opened her bag a third time.

“You know where it is, don’t you?”

I considered this.

“I know where a phone is.”

She narrowed her eyes.

Then the phone vibrated.

She looked at it.

There was a pause.

“You could have told me.”

“I nearly did.”

This answer was not well received.

The handbag was repopulated. The wallet returned, followed by the keys, sunglasses, tissues and the object wrapped in a receipt, whose function remained unresolved.

Life continued.

I have thought about this more than the incident warrants.

We tend to assume that when something cannot be found, the problem is insufficient searching. We widen the search. We inspect more places. We empty containers. We retrace our movements.

Sometimes this is sensible.

Sometimes the thing we are looking for is already part of the process by which we are looking for it.

This is surprisingly difficult to notice.

I have since caught myself doing versions of the same thing. Looking for information already open in another window. Trying to solve a problem whose solution is embedded in the arrangement I have decided is the problem. Adding another tool because I have temporarily forgotten what the existing one does.

I am less amused by her now.

Though I remain grateful for the phone call.

Without it, we might still be there.