Patting every pocket for your keys while they’re in your hand is a whole lesson about looking for what you already have.

Searching can become its own activity, absorbing enough to blot out the thing you were searching for. It happens with objects and with bigger stuff. You hunt for confidence, or a friend group, or a reason to feel all right, while some version of it is already within reach. The looking feels like effort, so it feels productive, and that is the trick.

Before you go hunting for something this week, stop and take stock of what you already have. Name the friends who already answer your texts. Name the skill you already practise without calling it one.