You Are Here: How to Find Yourself Amid Life’s Noise and Confusion

You can lose yourself in this world if you aren’t careful

The only noise in my home is the gentle hum of the kitchen appliances running underneath the sound of my pets’ water fountain. Yet, even without the noise of the television or the melodies of my latest playlist, the world outside presses in. The world is in chaos, and every day, something new calls for us to pay attention. Pay attention to election cycles. Pay attention to genocide and where it’s happening. Pay attention to the silent scream of women everywhere losing rights and fighting like mad to get them back. Pay attention to what our bosses want from us, what our families expect, and what society demands. Pay attention.

Yet, with all the noise, it feels impossible to focus. Some days, it feels like everyone is shouting, and no one is listening. Is it any wonder so many people find themselves unmoored and unknowable?

I found myself standing in a nature park recently looking at a map. You are here. I kept my eyes fixed on those words. I looked around me and at an unfamiliar landscape and then back at the map. I looked hard at where I was and then at where I needed to go. I tried to connect the two, and maybe that seems simple to some, but I wanted to be sure I was going in the right direction because I’ve gone down the wrong direction before. I knew I didn’t have the time, energy, or resources to make another grand miscalculation. I needed to move ahead with confidence. I needed to know that the path I had chosen was the right one. Not the most popular one. Not the one with the best sights along the way. I needed the one that would get me to exactly where I wanted to go.

When the world is screaming around us, the best thing we can do sometimes is to take a step back, put our hand over our hearts, and say I am here. I don’t believe that we should ignore the pain in the world or the good that each individual can do in a lifetime. I do think it’s important to connect with who we are and make time to know and care for ourselves even when it seems like the world is burning around us.

There is power in knowing who we are. We can hardly help anyone else when we’re unable to know or help ourselves. Taking that step back to find ourselves on the map is important.

Too many people are following the trail of those around them. They don’t question if it’s the right path. They’ve committed to it, and they send every missive from the world around them through the filter of that commitment. They don’t ask if the world is burning because they keep lighting the matches. They don’t ask if what they’re doing is helping or hurting in a world that’s in unbearable pain already.

And once, a long time ago, I was one of them. I silenced my personal beliefs and followed those of my family, culture, and religion. I stood holding protest signs I couldn’t possibly understand. I opposed things and couldn’t have clearly articulated the other side to any single argument because I had only learned that one side was right and all others were wrong. It was as simple as that and yet not simple at all.

For a long time, I stayed on that path and convinced myself it was where I was supposed to be. When I looked at the map of my life, I couldn’t find myself. Nothing looked right. I was well and truly lost, and every step down that path erased more of who I was meant to be. I began to lose pieces of myself like breadcrumbs along the way, but like every fairy tale with a girl lost in the woods, I began to turn around and follow those clues back toward light and hope — a better path.

Then, there are others who are so busy fighting for everyone and everything that they forget to spend just a little of that energy on themselves. They’re burning for their causes, and while we need the warriors willing to give anything and everything to make the world better, we need them to survive to keep doing it. To live. To thrive. Not to let themselves be swallowed up in bigger causes and lost forever.

It took a long time to stand in the middle of my life and feel like I belonged — like I liked who I was and who was around me. To feel sure of my purpose. To truly know myself. I can hold a hand to my heart and say you are here and feel comforted by that knowledge.

It’s been a year of discomfort. A year of financial setbacks and shocking losses. A year of depression and sudden panic attacks. A year of finding parts of myself and feeling like I lost others. Yet, it’s been a year of clarity, too. A year of learning myself. A year of finding my way through the darkness and knowing that I was on the right path all along. A year of holding my hand over my heart even on the bad days and whispering, You are here.

During my personal crisis, the world was going through its own. The news would filter down to me in a fog. People were hurting, and are hurting still. Acts of war act as a blanket excuse for genocide. Humanitarians remain the only good guys when humans kill other humans in the name of anyone or anything. I haven’t been silent because I haven’t been paying attention. I’ve been silent because I’ve been trying to survive a crisis of my own that could have taken me out entirely.

I couldn’t save anyone else when I could barely drag myself out of bed in the morning and function. I am a single parent holding up my small world on my own. I couldn’t hold space for anyone or anything else when I was drowning in overwhelm and responsibility. I had to put one foot in front of the other, and it was hard to think beyond those small painful steps. But I took them. I moved forward because I knew it was how I would survive it.

I wonder sometimes if people even know where they stand — and if it’s on the right or wrong side of history. I wonder if their personal you are here is a place they feel proud of, a place that feels like home to them. Or if it’s a place they got to because it was easy or because everyone in their lives told them it was the only place to stand. If they ever look around and wonder how they got there or if it’s where they want to be.

I found my way to where I was going, in case you were wondering. On the map on that nature trail, it told me where I was. It showed me where I wanted to be. I took the path. It wasn’t easy. There were times I certainly thought I was lost. There were times when I came to points that filled me with anxiety — alligators in the wild can do that to a person. But I remembered where I was and where I wanted to be. Every step toward where I was going was the right one. I stopped to take pictures along the way. Life is hard and scary — but it’s beautiful, too.

The world is loud and only getting louder. I cannot stay protected in my own personal bubble and let the rest of the world around me burn while I merely observe it. Yet, I needed that moment of holding my hand over my heart and finding myself. I needed to be sure that the actions I take are reflective of the person I am, the person I want to be, and the one I’m becoming. I needed to feel my own heartbeat and to know my own place with its mix of both pain and privilege.

I needed to remember that this is my one life, and I cannot live it by anyone else’s measure but my own. I have to be able to wake up and go to sleep knowing that I am doing my best and living in accordance with a value system that harms none. When the world gets loud, I have to be able to tune into the beating of my heart and know that I am still here. I am still breathing. I’m alive, and it matters. Deep breath in. Deep breath out. I am here. I take the next right step and make it count.