I’ve never been lost.
While travelling.
Literally.
I’ve always been a “roadgeek”. It’s an actual term; it describes
someone who is passionate about roads and travelling and maps and atlases and
highway networks and transportation. There is a roadgeek forum online that I
read daily and post on occasionally. Roadgeeks get “geeked out” over new road
construction and planned projects and…not getting lost. Those who know me and
know this part of me will occasionally call me to ask for directions, or to ask
for help if they are lost. (I am trying to avoid all of the obvious and
applicable metaphors here…but don’t worry, I’m headed in that direction…) Over
the years, I’ve collected road maps and atlases. I can get “lost” on going to Google
Maps and just looking things up for the sake of looking them up.
But, let me clarify my statement a little with two qualifiers: first,
I’ve never been lost, if I define lost as “I have NO idea where I am”. There
have been times where I may have missed a turn, or have tried a road expecting
to end up in one place, only to find out I’ve ended up somewhere different than
expected. But, in those cases, I kept driving, even if I was way off track, and
eventually I was able to figure out how to get back on track - without having
to stop and ask or look at a map, or use GPS. (In the roadgeek circle, there is
a sort of shame in having to rely on GPS, and a good roadgeek will point out
the many potential flaws in many of the GPS programs, such as inaccurate or
non-updated data, or inaccurate road names or town identifiers.)
Where I have resorted to GPS, though, is to help prevent the second
qualifier I have: trying to drive to a specific new address. And, this is my
own fault in an exercise of overconfidence. There have been times, where I’ve
been driving long distance to a specific address where I haven’t been before,
that I’ve gotten lost. Instead of using GPS, I would look up the address
online, and (attempt) commit to memory the directions to get to that address. Not
write down directions, not print out directions, but try to commit to memory;
because I can get to a specific town without an issue. And, when I have gotten
lost is when I’ve gotten to that specific town, and missed a key turn on a side
street within that town.
Basically, at any time, I can get to within three miles of an address
without more than an initial look at a map. It’s those last three miles, where,
sometimes I might get lost.
BUT…that’s not the point of this post…
Figuratively, however, I’ve been lost many times.
(Now we’ve crossed the border from literal to figurative.)
I think most of my entire generation has been lost at one point on our
journey. We were given a destination, and we were given a set of directions. We
were told that if we did well in school and worked hard and followed our
passions and dreams, we’d find a good and loyal job, work there until
retirement, and we’d be happy and successful along the way. And it seemed like
a good route. Kind of vaguely defined, but good.
But, that’s like getting the following directions: get on the nearest expressway,
head south, and stay on the expressway, and you’ll get there. No one lives on
expressways. You have to find the right place to get on. And off. Assuming that
the expressway stays open. And assuming that wherever “there” is is actually to
the south, versus, say, east.
Most of us did as we were told. I did. And I think I’ve been one of the
lucky ones, in having the same job for 17 years, but that too involved a major
sharp turn (literally, north, from PA to NY) at a major juncture. But, I think
most of us haven’t been that lucky, because the landscape has changed. We were
told to drive a nice country cruiser down a nice country road, and instead we
ended up on a crowded city freeway, where we’re in bumper-to-bumper traffic
going 85 MPH and our exit just flew by…and the next one…and the next one…and
our car can’t keep up, and…
How many of us have been on one road, and all of a sudden we find out
that it’s closed, and we have to turn off? Without a marked detour? And our
non-updated GPS is rendered basically useless? Or…the road that we know we need
to take all of a sudden is a toll road, and we can’t afford the toll? Or, we
have to get off the expressway because we’re low on gas, but the gas station
that the sign said was at the exit was closed? So, now, we’re driving down
empty two-lane roads through nothing, hoping to find a little crossroads town
with a one-pump gas station relic from back in the glory days of driving?
Nothing…nothing is much worse (at least to me, literally and
figuratively) than flying along an open road at a nice pace, and then being
forced to come to a screeching halt.
What to do?
Well, in the literal world, when you’re lost, the first thing to do is
to try to figure out where you are at that moment, and to figure out where you
came from, and to try to figure out where all that is in relation to where you
want or need to go. Which, depending on where you’re lost, might be easier said
than done. Sometimes there are tools, such as GPS, or road signs, but sometimes
those tools may not work.
Figuratively, where are we?
As I wrote, most of us were told that if we did well in school and
worked hard and followed our passions and dreams, we’d find a good and loyal
job, work there until retirement, and we’d be happy and successful along the
way. Except that one, loyalty is gone. Loyalty to employees, loyalty to
employers, loyalty to regular customers, loyalty to family and community. I’m
not going to attempt to find out and/or debate where this all fell apart (I don’t
think that debate is important to my point), but it’s not enough anymore to
find a good job within your passion and be a good employee. Between rising
living costs but lack of rising salaries, employees are forced to move from job
to job more than ever…assuming that they are not laid off in a
cost-cutting/profit increasing move, which has been occurring more and more. And
I’m not about to suggest that profits aren’t important – but it seems to me
that companies used to balance profit motives and employee loyalty/morale/needs
much more than the profit-by-any-means-necessary standard in place today. On
the flip side, as consumers, we’re pressured to buy products at the lowest cost
possible because our dollar is stretched, instead of buying locally loyally as
was done in the past. The competitive marketplace/society/lifestyle has
manifested itself to a point where we are each in competition at an individual
level, instead of balancing collective needs with individual connectedness.
The rules of society have changed. Some of us have adapted well. Some
of us haven’t. Some of us don’t know how. Our general paths, laid out for us
based on antiquated rules, no longer lead in any direction. Do we have the
tools? Are there resources that are out there to help us find our direction? That’s
a hard question to answer in the figurative state, particularly in such a broad
wide-reaching topic as this.
But regardless of all that, the most important thing, in any attempted
translation of this figurative state, can be found in crossing over to the
literal state. When travelling literally, if you find yourself lost, the key is
this: keep moving. If all else fails,
just pick a direction and try to reset your bearings later. And unfortunately,
it may take a series of getting lost, moving, still being lost, stopping,
resetting, moving, still being lost, resetting, etc. But not moving is not
getting any closer to unlost. Hiking guides have different viewpoints. One
tactic is to keep moving downhill and/or downstream, because in either case eventually
you will stumble upon some sort of civilization. Another tactic, if you have a
cell phone (tool), is to keep moving uphill in the hopes of finding a stronger
signal, which helpers/responders can locate easier to locate you. Those two
pieces of advice appear to be conflicting, except that they do have one thing
in common: keep moving.
Once you start moving, at that point, the very next important frame of
mind is…faith. And I’m not going to get into a religious conversation or
definition of faith, but let me cross back over to the literal state. Ion the
hiking example, you have to have faith that if you go downhill or downstream,
you will in fact find some sign of civilization. Or, if you go uphill, you will
be able to use your cell phone as a tool to be found. Or, as I stated above,
whenever I’ve found that I ended up somewhere I didn’t expect, I had faith in
my knowledge that I would end up somewhere that I would figure out how to get
back on track, even if I was way off track.
In the figurative state, that advice is much harder in practice, depending
on the specific situation. But if I broaden the scope to leave the question of where
to have faith undefined, the advice still applies in my opinion. Depending on
where we’re lost, we might not have a knowledge base to be faithful in, but if
nothing else, we have to have faith that something will come up, whether it’s a
tool, or an instinct, or a person, or a sign, or our own perseverance, or
something, that we can tell ourselves that if we just keep moving, something
will happen that will help us find our direction or that we ourselves will be
found.
Faith is a tricky thing…belief in the unknown, or unproven, or
abstract. Without getting into a long debate about faith, or make suggestions
about what to have faith in, the important thing is to have faith for faith’s
sake alone, if nothing else. My point is not to make this an exercise in
eventually trying to prove the thing you choose to have faith in, nor am I
trying to make a point that you have to limit your choice to have faith in a
single thing (as long as you don’t pick conflicting things). But, having faith
in something and acting on that faith, even if it turns out unsuccessful, is
better than standing still. If we’re so lost that we have no idea where to turn
or which direction to go or even how to move, just having faith in flipping a
coin and taking a step is better than giving up and ending the journey.
None of us, I don’t think, ended up exactly where we expected to be, or
wanted to be. Unlike a literal trip, none of us has been in control of every
aspect of our trip, nor will we ever have. The important thing about the
journey is the journey itself, and it’s not always going to be free of issues,
traffic, closures, accidents, detours, dead ends…but hopefully, our journey
also has scenic views, good co-pilots, blasting tunes, meaningful adventures…
…and if nothing else, some satisfaction at times in the direction we’re
headed and the progress that we make…
