There’s something powerful about a suspiciously missing thing. It’s given a reasonable amount of time to show up. When it doesn’t, the questions, worrying, curiosity, judgement, and even conspiracies commence:
What happened?
Where IS it?
Was it deliberately removed?
Was it accidentally mislaid?
Was it an oversight?
Was it maliciously axed?
Was it replaced?
Was it thrown out?
Who was responsible for its absence?
Was it only meaningful to a few?
And then, people start ferociously looking for it, until they find it, or some semblance of it. People who never even heard of it, get curious and join the search. People who don’t have a dog in the hunt, learn more than they ever knew about it before. Even the messy, busy, and nosy people get in on the investigation, and give the missing thing wings.
Whether they’re offended, amused, disappointed, angry, or sad, suddenly everybody’s talking about it, and its relevance, importance, and meaning. The missing thing gets amplified and platformed exponentially more than it would have, had it simply been in place, or included where it supposedly belonged.
Sometimes, omission is a good thing.🙂
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