n discussing the mitzvah of returning lost property, the Rambam notes that a person's life and livelihood need to be returned to him as well as his possessions. This includes health and his self esteem and other emotional and spiritual attributes. What seems strange is: what does one's health, for example, have to do with a lost object? The Rambam doesn't make a distinction between lost souls, lost shoes, lost health, or lost self esteem. All of these things are subject to being lost in a way that someone needs to return them.
Before coming to Israel, I was a network engineer in the US. Thus, in considering this question, the first thing that popped into my mind is the difference between MS Windows and Unix. For those of you who are unfamiliar with MS Windows, it can been described in the following manner: Everything is separate. The disk is accessed one way, and printers are setup somewhere else, and programs are in yet another place. Everything in MS Windows is neatly, but separately compartmentalized. So, too, in my question above, I was viewing souls, shoes, health and self esteem as having little or nothing to do with each other.
Unix, on the other hand, is very different. In Unix, all things are accessed through the directory structure. The monitor, the printer, the disk drives, and all the programs are all referenced in one directory structure. Just like the Rambam who makes no distinctions between souls, health, and sneakers - everything is subject to being lost, and must, upon finding, be returned.
Though the Midrash tells us that we learn all the Torah in the womb before we are born, it also tells us that a blow to the lip by an angel causes us to lose that knowledge upon birth. I have found learning Torah challenging, and when I find that analogies from the world of computers so familiar to me help me make sense of things, it seems to me that a precious possession, long lost, is being returned. Just like the Rambam explained. Thanks, computers!