Sometimes when you go looking for yourself you get more lost than you were before. And sometimes that’s a good thing.
“I feel lost.” We often utter these words with a sense of anxiety and existential dread. Especially if you’re in your 40’s and 50’s because apparently, we’re suppose to have life figured out by then.
But if you look at this with a different set of eyes, you might find that to be lost is to be surrounded by possibilities, a myriad of roads less travelled, each begging you to take a step. It’s as though you’re standing in Jorge Luis Borges' “Library of Babel,” surrounded by an infinite number of books containing every possible combination of letters. Choice is your blessing and your curse; every action, a foreshadowing of existential consequence.
Consider the irony. To look for yourself implies a separation - an “I” searching for another “I,” a seeker and a sought. Who’s the “who” doing the searching, charting the unknown terrains of the psyche, trying to place a “You Are Here” sticker on your soul? Philosophers like Descartes wrestled with this duality. “Cogito, ergo sum,” he asserted. I think, therefore I am. Yet, the more you think, the more the boundaries blur, the self becomes a construct, an abstract notion as elusive as time.
Getting lost can be beneficial. To be lost is to abandon the beaten path of societal expectations, religious doctrine, and cultural norms. Every wrong turn a lesson. Every detour reveals another layer of your being. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been lost. Stripped of the familiar, blown around like a seed in the wind, free to take root in new pursuits, unhindered by preconceived notions and habits of being.
To be lost is to invite psychological tension between comfort and growth. You can sense Kierkegaard’s ghost looming in the background warning you against the paralysis of too many choices, too much freedom. But you push into the dark anyway hoping to stumble upon undiscovered parts of yourself. Maybe you might unearth some hidden fears or awaken your dormant dreams, or discover your hidden potential.
Sometimes being lost is not an end, but a beginning of an evolution, a chance to redraw the borders of “self,” to rewrite the narrative of who you are and who you could be. Wander long enough and you might just find that to be lost is to be truly free - free to question, to explore, to become.
So let yourself get lost. In the chaos of the unknown, you might find beauty; in the confusion, you might find harmony; and in despair, you might find meaning. It’s the ultimate gamble in the casino of life, where the stakes are high, but the rewards are unparalleled - a deep understanding, a richer experience, and a life lived in the colour of curiosity and wonder, rather than in the mere black and white of conformity and comfort.
