Let’s Get Lost

I have a special talent.

And I’m here to brag about it: I get lost. Often and well.

If I were a superhero, one of my super powers would be (cue booming announcer voice): Getting Lost. If honorary doctorates were awarded for “Taking the Path Less Traveled—By Accident,” I’d have at least three. If, at the pearly gates, awards are given . . .

Um, where was I? Sorry, lost my train of thought.

My special gift can turn even the most casual Sunday drive into an adrenaline-charged adventure.

How so? Easy: I tend to believe I’m lost even before I’m lost, so I panic and turn off prematurely. My wonky sense of direction doesn’t help, and neither does my ill-informed notion that roads sharing the same name are bound to connect at some point, maybe even around the next curve. I can’t help thinking, if I try out my theory this time, I might stumble upon that link and prove I’ve never actually been lost. I simply needed to keep going.

There’s no getting around my thing for back roads, either: I love driving back roads, but they’re no longer enough. I’m now going out of my way to find back roads to the back roads. Back yards might have to be next. Where will that take me?

Why not get a GPS? you might be wondering.

Oh, I have one. It’s hardly a match for my talents. Super power, remember?

Just so no one imagines I’m also always late, I can assure you I learned early on to build Getting Lost Time into my commute. Granted, it’s not always enough. I sometimes underestimate myself. Speaking of which, I should mention my special abilities don’t only apply to driving; they’re potent enough to carry into life outside my car.

I confess—without hesitation—I’ve always admired the type of people who seem to know, from birth, exactly what they want to do with their lives. As tiny infants, they set their sights on becoming doctors or actors or royal ravenmasters and forge directly ahead. After all, a straight line is the shortest distance between two points.

It is, isn’t it? I wouldn’t know.

There are those stay-the-course people . . . and then there’s me.

I take the scenic route, by choice or by accident, and that means I cover a lot of ground.

This brings me (in my typical meandering way) to my point: getting lost isn’t always a bad thing. Yes, taking the twisty, tangled, doubling-back-on-itself route can slow your overall progress, and running into dead ends isn’t outrageously fun, but getting lost also means you experience a lot of scenery you might otherwise have missed. I live in a rural-ish area, and I’ve seen some of my favorite farms and forests and wide open, rolling hills DWL (that’s Driving While Lost, for the uninitiated).

I could say the same about my life. I have a habit of making things harder for myself, but it does add interest. Who knows which direction my next turn will take me? I can’t say for sure, but I can almost guarantee I’ll find someplace new and potentially even exciting.

What about you?

Are you one of those fortunate people with a good sense of direction—on the road or in life? Or are you one of those alternately fortunate people who takes the path less traveled . . . and then the one less traveled than that . . . and then the one even less traveled? If so, maybe we’ll meet at a crossroads somewhere. We could take in the scenery together and think about where to head next.

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

Henry David Thoreau

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*This post has been edited from one I previously wrote and shared.