Being Lost
Though your destination is not clear You can trust the promise of this opening; Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning That is one with your life’s desire. ~John O’Donoghue
For the past week or so, I have been feeling very lost … and it feels wonderful.
It sounds contradictory, doesn’t it? If you accept Webster’s dictionary definition—”unable to find one’s way; not knowing one’s whereabouts”—being lost should be an unpleasant experience.
But from another perspective, being lost is akin to stepping outside your comfort zone. It paves the way for looking at life through a different lens.
So says author and essayist Rebecca Solnit. To Solnit, “Lost [is] mostly a state of mind, and this applies as much to all the metaphysical and metaphorical states of being lost as to blundering around in the backcountry. The question then is how to get lost. Never to get lost is not to live…”
In other words, to get lost is to begin to live.
In my mind’s eye, however, there is a significant difference between being lost and being outside my comfort zone.
When I am outside my comfort zone—something that has happened many times in my life— I am forced to find new ways of coping. But whether the experience is pleasant or unpleasant, my inner compass generally tells me where I am and where I want to get to.
By contrast, being lost means that I don’t quite know where I am or where I want to get to, at least metaphorically. I’ve defined myself for the past eight years as a writer. But can I be a “writer” if I don’t know what I want to write about. I have an idea about a new book, but I’m not committed to it. I have a long list of potential blog topics, many of them linked to themes of my novel, but they don’t inspire me as they did while A Fitting Place was a work-in-process. I’ve done quite a bit of freelancing, but I have little enthusiasm for seeking out new freelance assignments.
Perhaps it’s a simple case of writer’s block. But it has occurred to me that, as woman on her eighth distinctly different career, I have a history of changing horses on a regular basis. Has my career as a writer run its course?
Since my novel was released in May, I have filled much of my time with busy-ness: Facebook posts, tweets, Google +, checking stats on book sales, and reading an endless stream of blogs on writing, publishing, and marketing—anything to mask my sense that I had no idea what I wanted to do next. But then, this past Sunday, as I read Solnit’s words on the link between getting lost and becoming alive, I realized in a burst of insight that not knowing what I want to do next is a gift.
I am healthy and have enough energy to swim a half mile every day. I share a love with a thoughtful, caring and healthy man. Being lost frees me to travel, to spend hours reading, to sit and watch the full moon rising over the skyline.
Why, a few months shy of age 70, do I have to have a purpose every day? Why should I not take joy in the fact of being lost?
The world is, potentially, my oyster.
To be lost is to be fully present ~Walter Benjamin
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