The Comedy of Errors

William Shakespeare

He that commends me to mine own content,
Commends me to the thing I cannot get.
I to the world am like a drop of water
That in the ocean seeks another drop,
Who falling there to find his fellow forth,
Unseen, inquisitive, confounds himself.
So I, to find a mother and a brother,
In quest of them, unhappy, lose myself.

There is something about searching, like The Comedy of Errors. Whether we know what we are looking for or do not have a clue, or simply (wrongly) think we know what it is we are after, searching defines most of us. Looking high and low and under rocks and in the trees, in cellars and behind clouds, we play hide and go seek and we go on treasure hunts with maps as priceless as they are spurious. Searching for a needle in a haystack, I found a beach ball and a toy boat, a book and some hay, and an old sock, the keys to my car, a job, a memory, a name and a tune, I found all manner of things and eventually my needle, too, which was tied to a thread so I could find my way back out again and escape the monster I had found in the haystack.