What do an old red purse, a class ring from Maine, a forest in Finland, and your muse have in common?

More than you think.

Let’s start with the purse. Last year, when a custodian at Ohio’s North Canton Middle School (formerly Hoover High School) was repairing some trim between the lockers and the wall, he found a dusty old purse inside the wall. Want to know just how dusty it was? It had been there since 1957. That’s a lot of dust. 

The purse was a time capsule of sorts that offered a glimpse into the life of an American teenager in the fifties. It contained a comb, some makeup (powder and lipstick), several black-and-white photos of friends (and one of a dog), a Hoover High School football schedule from 1956, and membership cards to the local public library, YMCA, and American Junior Red Cross. Oh, and don’t forget, 26 cents was rattling around in the bottom.

The school succeeded in tracking down the owner—former student Patti Rumfola. You can bet Patti never expected to see that purse again. Well, she didn’t—Patti died in 2013 after teaching school for years in Annapolis, Maryland. But the school sent the purse to her children, each of whom kept a wheat penny from the purse to remember their mom by. To read more, click the button below.

Now for the class ring. Debra McKenna’s high school sweetheart, Shawn, gave it to her in Portland, Maine, just as he was leaving Morse High School for college in 1973. Not long after, Debra took the ring off to wash her hands in the restroom of a department store. When she realized she had left it on the sink, she ran back—but there was no sign of the ring.

She was extremely upset. Her boyfriend wasn’t. As it turned out, it didn’t really matter—the two married in 1977 and stayed together, class ring or not, for forty years until he passed away in 2017 after a six-year battle with cancer.

What about the forest in Finland? A few months ago, thirty-eight-year-old Marko Saarinen was scouting around with his metal detector in the forest in Kaarina, Finland. He likes to do it, but he’s never found anything too earthshaking; his normal stash includes things like old coins, musket balls, bottle caps, and trash.

Until last month.

When Marko first saw the ring, which was buried six inches deep in the snow, he thought it was a toy from a vending machine. Taking a closer look, he realized it was no toy. Three things engraved on the man’s class ring—Morse High School, 1973, and the initials S.M.—provided the clues he needed to track down the owner. He contacted the alumni group, who said there was only one male S.M. in the graduating class of 1973: Shawn McKenna.

Yes, that Shawn. Yes, that ring—the one Debra accidentally left in the department store bathroom in 1973.

Nobody knows how the ring got from the Maine department store restroom to the floor of a remote forest in Finland. Probably never will.

What can you take from these two stories? Simple: what is lost can be found.

You’ve probably lost some things in your life. I have too. When I borrowed The Sword in the Stone book from my best friend in fifth grade, it vanished off the face of the earth. I never did find it. Somewhere between Kansas and Virginia, I lost my two-year-old’s blanket. The one she couldn’t sleep without. Once while moving things into a storage unit, I lost a $100 bill (at a time in my life when a hundred dollars might as well have been a million). And just a couple of months ago, I lost my daddy’s ID badge from Geneva Steel—the one he was using when he died in 1963.

I’ve also occasionally been convinced that I lost my muse. Maybe you have too.

Your muse is your creative side. It’s in a place where you dream and imagine and store your hidden memories. It’s the thing that inspires a writer, poet, artist, musician, or thinker. It’s the thing that inspires you. You can imagine her in any way you’d like. This is how I imagine mine; she’s off playing with the fireflies until I need her again. Tomorrow. Or maybe later today.

Your muse brings you ideas as fistfuls of treasures.

Most of the time, you’re probably able to find her right away. But not always. Brian DeLeonard of Mythic Scribes said this about his muse: “She’s fickle. She’s flaky. She’s prone to flights of fancy, to leading men on, to ditching at a moment’s notice. She’ll have me smiling one moment, and then leave me cursing and confused and feeling trapped as she runs out the door. And I never know what to think of the fun we had together. Was it real? Or should I forget about it?”

Your muse isn’t something you can see or touch or feel. It’s in your mind and heart. It’s in your soul—in the place from which your deepest creativity bubbles.

You might sometimes think you’ve lost your muse. But know this: you are connected to your muse in a way that can’t be broken.

Your muse never leaves you, no matter what.

So even if you think it’s lost, it’s not. Just like a dusty old red purse in the wall of a school or a class ring buried in the snow of a forest in Finland, your muse is there. You might just have to look a little harder to find it.

In other words, never give up. What’s lost is found. It happened to the red purse. It happened to the class ring. And it will happen to your muse—never lost, and there for the finding.