Who seeks is found

I have always loved hunting for citations and references, doing bibliographic surveys. I like to read a book or a text, which leads me to another, which leads me to another; a writer who introduces me to another, who introduces me to another. I find a quote from an author in the middle of a text and I go in search of the source of the quote. I can spend hours doing this, and in the end have difficulty remembering where it all began and thus seeing the pile of books on the table only increase.

There are many phrases and ideas of Freud that have already taken on almost a life of their own, and it is a real challenge to know their source, in which text they are, the quote word for word. I dig through books, indexes, use google, ask friends for help to pull through memory . Usually it works and I end up finding it, which leads me to tremendous satisfaction, but sometimes the excerpt slips away, it seems to run away from me and I don't find it.

Recently this happened with the widespread idea that Freud would place as One of the goals of an analysis is to establish the patient's ability to love and work. In my view, this is a very interesting idea and, one of these days, it occurred to me to look for the specific passage in which Freud talks about it. The fact is that I did not find the blessed passage, not even with much search and help.

Lo and behold, undertaking a search for another term, not linked to this idea, I opened a short text by Freud, one of those much less known and came across almost at first the passage of "love and work". Bingo! Underlined passage with a heart drawn on the side. Long live Marginalia !

Sometimes, we look for something so much, we invest so much energy looking for something and we don't find it. Our goal seems to escape from us, escape from our gaze. Suddenly, no more than suddenly, I consider that we do not find, but we are found, found. The excerpt from the text found me, exactly when I was not looking for it. From time to time, It is necessary to put oneself in a Distracted state , let time work, so that we can (re)find what we are looking for.

After finding the excerpt, I intended to talk about the idea of "love and work" in this post, but the writing has that, we don't always know where it will lead. We started a trail and, almost without realizing it, we took a detour and fell into another. Looking for something, we find something else, which we were looking for before or which totally surprises us. The "love and work" is for another day, today, I stay in the "seek and be found".