The absence of an expected event can be the event that most needs explaining.

A silence where something should have been is data. The letter that did not come, the objection nobody raised, the symptom that never appeared, all carry information, and yet absences are far harder to notice than events, because nothing arrives to prompt the noticing. We look at what happened and rarely at what failed to.

Build in a habit of asking what you expected that did not occur. In a review, in a relationship, in a plan that seems to be going fine, the missing thing is often where the real story is. Who has stopped speaking up. What has quietly not been mentioned for a month.