Find Yourself by Losing Your Way

Get Lost. No, Really.

If we really want to know who we are at a soul level, we could go out and get lost somewhere. On a trail. On the road. All of a sudden, the way we think about the world and handle its challenges becomes readily apparent.

This is about getting lost and finding ourselves, but it’s also about how I found myself at an impasse.

A literal impasse. Both a figurative and literal “finding myself.”

In the state of Georgia, it feels like it’s rained more days than not for months. As much as I usually enjoy the rain, it’s been more than a bit excessive. When the sun finally came out, I was more than ready to hit the hiking trails again. It started out well enough. I took my normal trail. The creek beds were running high, and it was a little muddy, but I don’t really mind muddy hiking boots. It didn’t take me long to come across a flooded section of trail since my path wound around the creek before winding beside the river.

The trail was flooded, and most people would probably turn back, right?

You’ve probably guessed already that I’m not one of those people. I knew the trail well enough to think that I could go off it for a while until I found higher ground. It took a while, and there was a lot of brush to navigate and logs to climb over. I even had to jump over a very small ravine to get to that higher ground.

I probably should have been deterred when I realized that one of the bridges was submerged to the top of the handrail. But, of course, I wasn’t. I just kept going. And eventually, I did find a dry stretch of trail. I was busy patting myself on my back for my ingenuity and for having the whole of the trail to myself when I noticed an interesting sound. It was clearly the river, which was just around the bend. But it sounded louder. And closer.

I went around the corner, and I came face to face with the river.

On the trail. I don’t even want to hazard a guess at how many feet the river was up, but I will say that normally I look down at the river when I take this trail. Now, it was up on the trail, rushing by, and it also had managed to cover another bridge up to the handrails.

You would think I would have immediately turned around in resignation, but I spent a couple of foolish minutes contemplating the path I wanted to take. The one currently in the river.

I looked at my boots. No dice. If I’d worn my knee-high pink Wellingtons, maybe…. but I hadn’t.

I looked at the current. It was fast. And the river, already deep, was exponentially deeper. I had just taken some swimming lessons the previous summer to learn to do something more than not drown. I didn’t think I was quite a strong enough swimmer for what I was seeing.

Then, I thought about what had just gone through my head.

Had I really considered if I was wearing the right footwear and if I was a strong enough swimmer to swim the trail I wanted to hike?? Was I crazy????

This is how I found myself at an impasse.

The way was blocked, and I really found out who I was. I started laughing like a loon by myself, completing the notion that I might not be entirely on my rocker.

When I finally calmed down, I turned back with a shake of my head and a pretty fierce respect for how the Universe teaches me what I need to know. Because that is exactly who I am. I’m tenacious to a fault. I get an idea in my head, and I will follow it with dogged determination, even when it would be smarter to change my course.

I know I’m not alone in my stubborn refusal to change.

There are far too many of us out there, determined to keep to our path even when new information comes in that indicates we’re in the wrong or would be better doing anything else. Just look at the current United States political climate: there are a number of people trying to figure out if they have the right shoes on and how strong of a swimmer they are rather than admitting they were wrong and doing something about it.

I retraced my steps and thought about all the paths I had taken that may have started out okay but then turned out not to be. I thought about how my tenacity sometimes kept me on the wrong path far too long, determined not to give up or be wrong or to ever fail at anything I set out to do. A career. My marriage. A hiking trail that might have led to a watery death if I hadn’t had the good sense to learn from my experiences.

If we want to know who we are, we should just get lost.

We learn so much about who we actually are rather than who we think we are or pretend to be. We’re presented with challenges, and some of us freak out while others remain calm. Some try to stubbornly stick to the path or wander off it even if they don’t know where they’re going. We all have ways of coping with being lost, and it’s usually similar to how we cope with other life challenges if you think about it.

After all, when presented with a challenge, I usually stay optimistic, trusting my resourcefulness and tenacity to circumvent or overcome it. I may get anxious, but I don’t give up. But sometimes I won’t deviate from my path, and it’s kept me in some bad choices. I’m not sure if I would have connected the dots quite so quickly if the Universe hadn’t given me such a clear illustration of how my bullheaded nature can steer me wrong. It was a lesson I needed because even though I changed careers and ended my marriage, I still sometimes fix my mind on a path and refuse to be diverted no matter how many detour or danger signs pop up.

If we don’t like how we handle being lost, we don’t have to keep reacting in the same way.

If our “getting lost” selves aren’t who we want to be, we can work on learning to handle challenges better. It might look like practicing self-care or learning some coping skills. We may be hardwired to act in a particular way, but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn and practice new ways of being. I would even say we can learn better ways of being rather than just doing what we once learned or have always done.

I’m getting better. I recently made a decision about the cover for my book coming out this Fall. Then, the option I wanted fell through, and I spent hours alternately pouting and scowling at my computer screen thinking I want what I want. It was hard to wrap my head around any of the other options.

It took me a little while, although less than 24 hours, to realize that some of the other choices were at least equally as good as the one I had first chosen. Suddenly, I could hear echoes of that rushing river. Was I really going to have a standoff over the book cover when there were other really great options available? Was I?

I did find another option, and I laughed again at myself and how stubborn I can be. It’s usually a wonderful quality. After all, it’s how I’ve written 4+ books while working and single parenting. It’s how I managed a full-time job and a Master’s degree in the past or navigated a divorce with a two-year-old and a baby. Usually, my tenacity means that I can survive tough situations, calling on an inner resourcefulness that seems limitless sometimes.

Being tenacious isn’t a bad thing, on its own. But it can be. As anything can become when we are so set on it that we overlook good sense, new information, danger, or anything else that would help us make better, if different, choices.

But to make different choices, we have to admit that we were wrong.

Foolish. Misinformed. We have to be able to admit, sometimes publicly, that we took the wrong path, but we’re going to choose better. And if we make a wrong choice? Well, we just do it all again. We keep choosing, as we grow and learn and figure out who we are and what we want.

I didn’t try to swim my favorite trail, even though the thought actually passed through my mind for one insane moment. I went back, and I warned other hikers about what was up ahead. Then I took myself to a sunny rock beside a deep creek bed, and I watched the water flow.

Water, after all, is tenacious, too.

But it flows. It doesn’t bully its way through, although the other trail might disagree. But mostly, it changes course as it encounters obstacles. It doesn’t try to go through stone; it just flows around it and still gets where it’s going in the end. I sat in that sunny space and meditated on water and flow and how tenacity can be something gentle that still accepts what is.

Water changes things. It gets things done. But it doesn’t usually do it by going through obstacles but by flowing over them or around them. It adapts. And I needed to learn to adapt.

I’ve been getting better than I was in the past. But I still needed the reminder that I didn’t have to swim the trail when it was flooded just because I had decided on hiking that particular trail on that particular day. I didn’t have to fix my mind on one particular cover when other ones were at least as good if not better. I don’t have to decide on a path for my life and refuse to deviate even if I change or the path does.

We can be the lesson to others when we keep going, and it doesn’t work out well for us. I happily did not become the news story of the drowned hiker who was too stubborn (read: idiotic) to turn back when I found the river had taken over my trail. I decided instead to issue a few warnings and meditate on change. I think it was a better option than swimming a literal or metaphorical river.

We can be tenacious and get things done, but we can also learn to flow. We can get lost and manage to see ourselves as we are. We can learn to adapt. Or we can refuse to. That option usually doesn’t work out so well.

Read more like this: