The Tale of the Pillowcase

If you’re looking for something…maybe it’s right under your nose

One day I wanted to wash the pillowcase of my pillow, so I opened my closet, thinking that a clean pillowcase would have been there, but…it wasn’t there.

I searched for weeks in the whole closet, but no way to find it. So this morning I decided to remove the old pillowcase from the cushion and wash it anyway. Guess what I found when I removed the old one…its lost brother was on the pillow too! It means that, some weeks ago, instead of removing the old one and putting on the pillow the new one, I simply put the latter on the first. No idea what I was thinking at that time! (In case you’re thinking that I slept for weeks with the same pillowcase… this pillow is not the one I use to sleep every night).

What’s the point? I was looking for something which was right under my nose.

I’ve always been a person who looks for hidden meanings in everything, does not stop at a surface level, but when it’s time to find something obvious, I don’t even see it. In this case, I was putting my back and my head on the obvious, but I stayed focused only at one thing: the place in which I put the pillowcase.

The Hunting of the Pillowcase makes me understand that sometimes you desperately search for something, while you don’t recognize you already have it. Instead of going the same usual direction, the thing you crave the most is right under your nose. Or maybe it is in the opposite direction. I often read this sentence on social media:

“Do not be angry with a dry well because it does not give you water, rather ask yourself why do you keep insisting on taking the water where you already understood that you cannot find it.”

Buddha

Well, in this case my dry well was my closet, and for years it was Austria. I kept living a life I didn’t like and didn’t want, and I was so mad I wasn’t able to find a job that I was focusing on hating what I had, instead of repairing what was wrong. Because if someone hates everything and everyone, there is obviously something to repair, but it is inside of that person.

Concentrating only on what is wrong (why isn’t this well giving me some water?) distracts you from the beauty you have around you (a nice waterfall?). When you take a deep breath, leave out the anger, and realise that you have contributed to carry out the life you are living, then, congratulations! That is the starting point when the hero acknowledges the past mistakes and finds out incredible powers such as courage, self-awareness, growth…and it may hurt so bad. The hero may cry, but recognizes it is time to stand up and stop asking the dry well to give them water.

I used to be a very angry person inside. I thought the whole world was conspiring against me, until I firmly believed it and perceived this stupid belief as real. I looked for water at the wrong well and I kept telling the well it was wrong, it was its fault.

If you feel you failed in your life, it may be true, but only if you add “so far” at the previous sentence, or “sometimes”. Sometimes I failed in my life. I’ve failed in my life so far. Does it sound better, doesn’t it? I made some mistakes. All these feelings are fine, it’s ok to feel you as a failure. That is the moment when you can get up and start something else, another path, or maybe the journey you always wanted to take but didn’t have the courage or the possibility to begin. There is one huge advantage when you have failed: YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE ANYMORE. If you understand the advantage to take the risk to start again when you don’t have anything more to lose, YOU’LL WIN.

The Tale of the Pillowcase is the story of how a white pillowcase got me the idea to empower all the readers that are going to read my story. WOW!

In a nutshell:

1. do not search desperately for things, they may be already there, right under your nose. Stay focused on the solution, not on the problem.
2. do not search for solutions in the same place that created your issue.

If you enjoyed my article, I hope you’ll follow me for other motivating stories. You can also find on my profile old articles, which I think they are pretty good.

Thank you.