Then there was a crash. It started as a small dull thud that no one could have possible noticed. However in resulted the sound of concrete smashing against glass, sirens coming from every direction, yellow crawlers on the bottom of the television set, press conferences being interrupted and life as we possibly know it coming to a complete halt unable to move on, no, scratch that, unwilling to move on. Society, I am sure, if it has not done so already will implode on itself in a cataclysmic surrender of mankind’s general will to live.

Other might call it “mildly annoying” or just shrug their shoulders. I had found the Chinese hamburger stand that eluded me a week ago. That thud , that earth shattering event that caused to world to implode was me realizing this.

 Yesterday  went for a hunt  for a late night snack. Fascinated by the number of stationary and clothes stores that were opened at ten-thirty at night I had rounded the corner. I had first found the street that , just a week and a half ago was swollen with cars, empty. It was much smaller now and I almost did not recognize it. Had it not been for a store that I remembered because I had hoped, with no logical reason to think of, to be a restaurant I probably would not have recognized the street at all. The terrible lost feeling I had  not so long ago was seeming overblown, and apparently wrong. I found at my lowest point, at the point where I had resigned myself to never finding my way back to my hotel, I was actually less  than a ten minute walk away.

Naturally I looked for the Chinese hamburger   food stand and all  its “almost swarma but not quite “ goodness. So I walked a little further and I found it. Unlike every other food stand on the street this one was empty, and only recently so because the bucket that held some of the owner’s cleaning kit was still outside. This however was not the cause of the horrible thud that would cause society to implode and the planets to become unaligned , thus spinning the earth into the deep black void of space. That event occurred when I took three steps back.

Really? I was right in front of the Chinese Hamburger that first time and did not realize it?  Then an important moment if reasoning had dawned on me. If I had not been so busy looking for the Chinese hamburger, I would have found it.  A creeping feeling of extended logic started to come to play. I dislike those because it shatters my understanding of the universe and how it works.  Sometimes if you pause and stop looking you can find the answers right in front of you.

I mean, sure there needs to be an app for finding Chinese hamburger places, because before the invention of apps it was impossible to find anything. Much like information, particularly wrong or misguided information, was impossible to find before the internet came and took over our lives. Without Fox News or CNN we would not know the daily death tolls in countries that we dislike anyway or sit there worried about missing children from families we have never heard about instead of contacting our own families.  All of these things might be, possibly, unnecessary.

We may be so busy trying to find ourselves in a myriad of ‘idiot diets’ that prey on the general stupidity  and laziness of people that or help from complete strangers who care about your emotional  health so much that they will solve your mommy and daddy problems for $19.99  ($15.99 for the e-version). Was it now possible that we may be missing the obvious answers that are right in front of us?We even might be so worried about being lost that we don’t appreciate how good we have it and how close to happiness we really are and that the answer to all our life problems might be there if we take a moment from our searching and open our eyes.  What If we learned to be quiet and stop looking? Could we actually find what we are looking for?

I contemplated this for a bit . Not as much as I contemplated the Chinese Hamburger I wasn’t eating or the odd piece of meat that looked like beef but smelled like fish. I   walked across the street to   where a teenage girl was singing some Chinese love songs  in front of a crowd. Soft neon colored lights s and workers busily preparing to close work for the very short night lined the street. As I walked home in the quiet of the “less hot than the morning” night time I watched people enjoying life. They were laughing with friends, and one or two of them were eating a Chinese   hamburger.