Get lost, get free? Not necessarily

Sometimes, oftentimes, things, life, practice, doesn’t go as we would like, as we imagined, as we would hope. It takes us in a direction that is maybe more discombobulating than illuminating, more jarring and aggravating than soothing. Sometimes, we have no idea what we’re doing and where we’re going. And still, there is wisdom in that, perhaps more so.

Hence still, we keep going, because that’s the practice; to stick with it, to not abandon ourselves, to allow ourselves to lose control and return when we feel like giving up.

This is how this writing practice shaped up, out of resistance and a previous “failed” or rather dissatisfying effort, exploring the nature of journeys and transformation - and the fact that things are not necessarily the wonderous experience that they might be for others.

Thus, all experiences count, in the difference and their confusion. This is especially so when we happen upon an insight that runs counter to the one we might have been contemplating.

This short essay is the second in an ongoing series where I’ll be sharing the unedited results of my own reflective writing practice, in the interests of being truly real and raw. Each piece is followed by a writing prompt and occasionally some reading inspiration, in case you feel inclined to dive into the matters of your own mind in a similar - and delightfully or discomfortingly different - vein.

I remember driving the roads of Somerset in my Blue Citroen Saxo. I think it was that car, it definitely wasn’t the silver Golf that he bought me.

It was during the early days of my training as a local reporter for the regional newspaper I worked at. This was the early Noughties, before smart phones and Google Maps. I had nothing to rely on other than my A-Z and some vague sense of where I was meant to be going based on my editor’s instructions about the assignment.

I was bound to get lost, to struggle to find my way, with scant knowledge of what at the time was my new patch, personally and professionally.

I had the desire to discover a story, I had just enough ambition to want it, and not enough worry or responsibility to fret. That’s the lens I want to have on it, though I think in reality, my emotions were muted, owing to not being certain that I was where I ought to be. But having put myself there, I gave myself no option other than to keep going.

I had driven past the same roundabout three times, the petrol station returning to face me on either side over and over, telling me I’d gone wrong, again. Thankfully, with some level of foresight and awareness of my hopeless sense of direction and my tendency to panic out of fear of failing, I had left the office very early.

I remember laughing about it, perhaps nervously, as I went up and down the same road, trying less and less to find the right way. Wanting to give up but knowing that I couldn’t.

I decided to stop and call my Dad, not because I needed his help from 200 miles away, but because I hadn’t spoken to him in a while and I missed him. And I knew I had failed him, added to the cracks in his heart, let him down, made him cry for one of the very few times I had ever seen him do so.

I laughed as I told him that I had no idea where I was going, saying I knew I would get there and it was nothing to worry about, likely feigning confidence so that he might believe me. I don’t remember the conversation much more than that, what he said. He was probably stood with the receiver in the crook of his neck, his one good eye squinting as it received the smoke rising from the cigarette dangling out of his mouth, lit up as he would have answered the phone as he always did, his work interrupted by yet another non-work related call.

The words don’t always matter with my Dad, between us. When they do, they really do. The point was just to hear his voice, to feel not so alone in that moment, in spite of myself. To let him know that I was okay, to hear that he was okay, to tell him ‘I’m lost but I’m okay’. That’s why I stopped, to tell him, to tell myself. A half-truth at best.

In a very real sense, I’d taken a wrong turning by pursuing a relationship that was wrong on so many levels and that had led me to be here, in the middle of nowhere.

My Dad had known this wouldn’t work out, told me not to do it. He was right of course, though I refused to admit that at the time. And I suffered the consequences of my own ignorance.

So there I was, driving around in futile circles, wasting time, wanting someone to help me but not daring to actually ask for what I needed, heavy hearted with the responsibility for my own foolish choices.

Lost, trying to regain control, making it up as I went along.

This piece was the result of a ten-minute writing practice, exploring a time when I got/felt lost, inspired by the following passage from Rebecca Solnit’s book, A Field Guide to Getting Lost:

“To lose yourself: a voluptuous surrender, lost in your arms, lost to the world, utterly immersed in what is present so that its surroundings fade away. In Walter Benjamin’s terms, to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery. And one does not get lost but loses oneself, with the implication that it is a conscious choice, a chosen surrender, a psychic state achievable through geography.”

Writing prompt:

Describe a time when you were lost.