Get Lost…and Found

My early 1970's Cadette Girl Scout "Explorer" Badge

Orient yourself to the moment, the world, your soul.

"Lost really has two disparate meanings. Losing things is about the familiar falling away, getting lost is about the unfamiliar appearing."

Think about that. 

"There are objects and people that disappear from your sight or knowledge or possession; you lose a bracelet, a friend, the key. You still know where you are. Everything is familiar except that there is one item less, one missing element. 

Or you get lost, in which case the world has become larger than your knowledge of it.

Imagine yourself streaming through time shedding gloves, umbrellas, wrenches, books, friends, homes, names. This is what the view looks like if you take a rear-facing seat on the train. 

Looking forward you constantly acquire moments of arrival, moments of realization, moments of discovery. The wind blows your hair back and you are greeted by what you have never seen before. The material falls away in onrushing experience. It peels off like skin from a molting snake." 

Rebecca Solnit - A Field Guide to Getting Lost

Notwithstanding the airborne snake skin metaphor (I don't like snakes at all), she makes good directional points.  Let go, and leave your soul open to discover the unfamiliar and new moments.