Look for What’s There

As Enola Holmes chases down the first hints to unravel the suspected kidnapping of her brother Sherlock, she runs into dead end after dead end.

His room appears untouched even though someone has clearly searched it. The man she saw Sherlock looking at suspiciously the night before ended up dead in an alley. Enola must find a real lead soon, and time is not her friend.

All she has to go off of, so far, are two words: “Khost,” a city in Afghanistan, and “wrath,” which could mean any number of things beyond “anger.” At first, Enola racks her brain to find potential meanings. How is Khost relevant to this incident? And what does “wrath” stand for? Another place? A person?

But then, she remembers a piece of advice her brother, the greatest detective of all time, once gave her: “Look for what’s there. Not what you want to be there. You’ll see the truth soon enough.”

And so, instead of thinking with not enough material to think on, Enola gets out and seeks more evidence. She pulls on threads that will actually open drawers with new clues inside them. This is how, one by one, she pieces the case together. Not with guessing but with an analysis of the facts.

When we look at the world through glasses of a certain color, everything we see will seem to be in the same shade. If we’re committed to reality, we must regularly clean them, sometimes even take them off altogether.

Look for what’s there—and when there’s not enough to look at, keep digging until the truth becomes plain to see from where you stand.