I remember, years ago, getting more — Christmas cards. I might display them on my bar or over my fireplace. Sometimes, I’d call the sender with thanks for the reminder that we don’t connect nearly often enough, that we should get together this year, for sure.

It was always an unnecessary tradition, choosing a card and holiday stamp, but it was a tradition I enjoyed.

Although the pool of cards was smaller this year, the familiar phenomenon still played out.

I got a surprise card from someone I didn’t expect. She was a close friend of my two sisters at different times. Now that both sisters have passed away, we recognize having a certain kind of relationship, but I wouldn’t have imagined being on her holiday card list. Finding the surprise of its receipt sort of magical, I took my time handling and reading what she sent.

The front of the card featured an old-fashioned local winter scene, focusing on one of the famous Edward Kemeys sculpted lions that flank the entrance to the Art Institute on Michigan Avenue. The card contained a printed year in review letter (on standard copy paper) and a page of about a dozen snapshots, created on some sort of ink jet printer.

The images were somehow rendered more personal to me for having been affixed to paper rather than attached to a text and forwarded.

She addressed the card using my maiden name, which I haven’t used in over forty years,  It found me anyway. But, like I pointed out, I like surprises.

A few weeks ago I wrote about Kathryn Schulz’s book, Lost and Found, which, upon the recommendation of friends, I suggested as my book discussion group’s December selection.

The memoir offers some open but pointed pondering on the experience of losing things (people, objects, abilities, attitudes) in the natural course of life and “finding” or discovering things. Schulz notes the universal reaction of elation at this kind of experience, referring to “finding” as “a personal miracle.”

Of course, these experiences can set off grief, anxiety, surrender, bliss, contentment — all range of emotions, sometimes at the same time.

While I was looking into the Pulitzer Prize winner’s thoughts, I observed myself going through a related experience. I saw a gray folding umbrella in the lost and found bin of a nail salon which I only frequent a few times a year. I went through an inner battle about claiming the umbrella as mine although I had become separated from the accessory around the time of my last pedicure. I was pretty sure the umbrella was mine but was reluctant to claim it.  The proprietor was happy for me to take it.

The experience of re-claiming something that I had lost was exhilarating. The author’s thoughts were compelling. I was inspired to buy several paperback copies of the book and send them to a few friends.

One recipient relayed her own Lost and Found experience.  She had plans to visit her grand-niece in a distant suburb, a place she had never been before.  Not an everyday navigation app person, she got lost. She was ready to give up, but she felt determined to give herself a chance to get over being “lost,” and bask in the experience of finding. She stopped for directions from a woman at a dry cleaning shop and went on to have a great afternoon.

Certainly, another example of life imitating art. Schulz’s treatment of discovery inspired my friend to press on. I became almost euphoric at my friend recounting her personal experience. That brought some of the ideas in Schultz’s book to life.

Last week I went to a play with another friend, “Every Brilliant Thing,” a one-woman show with well-directed audience participation. It was about a young woman who grew up under the shadow of her mother’s depression and her attempt to prove to her mother that life was worth living by maintaining an ever-expanding list of daily occurrences that were wonderful.

The play reminded me that nearly everyone experiences some sort of trauma and loss. We all have to figure out how we fit into the world. We all hope to find love. Most of us learn to deal with disappointment and periods of seemingly unfathomable darkness in different ways. Some are better at this than others.

By remembering ice cream or skinny dipping or whatever is on your list of brilliant things, we fashion our lives. Towards the end of the play, the lead suffers a loss and reaches out to call the school counselor of her youth, a woman who, with the help of a sock puppet, made the girl feel safe to talk and express her feelings.

Art can be so healing in reminding us that the challenges we face are experienced by others. Art captures the great ideas behind what makes us human, but listening to someone’s actual account of what happened to them, what makes an idea a personal story that we can receive with gratitude and compassion is a special gift.

I loved hearing how my friend found her way in Vernon Hills or how a woman I met in the lobby after the play saw the production four times, marveling how each time was the same but unique.

Which brings me back to Christmas cards and year in review inserts and storytelling rituals.

We’re all here to listen to each other’s stories and to be aware and open to hearing our own in new ways — and that’s no small thing.