Drunk under the lamppost

My friend Nikhil recently told me the following joke:

A drunk loses the keys to his house and is looking for them under a lamppost. A policeman comes over and asks what he’s doing.

“I’m looking for my keys” he says. “I lost them over there”.

The policeman looks puzzled. “Then why are you looking for them all the way over here?”

“Because the light is so much better”.

We all look for things where the light is better, rather than where we’re more likely to find them. In words of Anais Nin, “we don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are”.

If this is true - and, who am I kidding? of course it is - I worry that we all stagger around, destined to be misunderstood. Or, worse. We’re all methodically, apocalyptically misunderstood, and it’s too dark to notice.