I stumbled across this gem in a book I was reading and felt like it was worth passing on. It’s actually written by a man who started losing his mind to Alzheimer’s at age 50 and found himself having to rediscover who he was all the time but I think it can be applicable to our lives in so many ways. I know that I and a lot of my twenty-something, and yes even thirty-something girlfriends often find ourselves holed up in a coffee shop discussing how lost we sometimes feel. It’s a very human, and perhaps even more feminine trait to think about what we’re doing with our lives, where we’re heading and if we are where we’re “supposed” to be. I think this poem is a great meditation on embracing that feeling, being at peace with not knowing and not looking at lost in a negative way. Hey, maybe we’re just playfully wandering?
The first few times
Being lost was frightening
Stark, pregnant
With the drama of change
Then, i didn’t know
That everywhere is nowhere
Like the feeling when an ocean wave
Boils you in the sand
But as time goes by
Each occurrence of lostness is quieter
Falling from notice
Like the sound of trains
When you live near the tracks
Until one day
When a friend asks
“How often do you get lost?”
And I strain to recall a single instance
It was then that I realized
Being lost only has meaning
When contrasted with
Knowing where you are
A presumption that slipped out of my life
As quietly as smoke up a chimney
For now I live in a less anchored place
Where being lost is irrelevant
For now, only when there is a need
Do I discover where I am
No alarm, no fear
Just an unconscious check in
Like glancing in a rear-view mirror
David Hollies, “lost and found”