The doorbell rang, and our dog, Zoe, got so excited that she sprinted towards the door, disregarding objects in her path. She knocked a candle off the table that had been lit for hours. The candle fell to the floor, shattered into pieces, and the melted wax spread all over the floor and carpet.

We got angry at Zoe for being careless about the objects. It's okay to get excited when someone is at the door; after all, she is a dog. That's what dogs do. But it's not okay to just run into objects.

A few days before that, my mom gave my wife a pair of earrings as a gift. Then, doing what little kids do, a nephew played with the box and lost one earring. We found one of them right away, but the other one was still missing. We thought we had lost it for good.