What does it mean to be lost? It is often considered one who cannot find their home, maybe went a wrong way on a path or lost on a journey.
However, there is often a loss that perpetuates the misdirection of the lost one. This cannot always be the case. We are all born without guidance and then eventually a path is given to us. It is either laid out for us by our parents or family, society or cultural heritage. Some of us like to believe that one can create their own path, affixing their eyes on the flow; an existential, universal path. Not having a path or determined direction can often be the downfall of a person. It is amazing how a lack of a foreordained foundation can lead to a downward spiral in one’s life.
In 1975 at 25 years old, Robyn Davidson a young Australian woman, set out on a 2,000 mile trek from Alice Springs, across the Gibson Desert to the Indian Ocean. A quest for solitude (the trip would take seven months and she originally wanted to do it alone) and self-preservation in one of the driest ecosystems on planet earth. As a person who often feels the most at peace when alone, I understand her sentiments. Often being trapped inside the four walls of society is a burden; other times people call it home. To desire to be nomadic in a society that reveres material stability is abhorred.
Travel today is seen as ambitious, something you do as a reward for the things you have earned back home. I have read of a couple who is on an endless honeymoon, working odd jobs at restaurants, and bed and breakfasts for financial compensation. Of course they maintain a blog, tracking their adventure and giving tips for others who wish to be savvy in wanderlust.
For most of us, this will never be a reality. Strict work environments, ambitions for money or a lack there of constrict us. But the opportunities of yesteryear aren’t so simply bestowed upon us today. Not when everything has been discovered; not when the world is flat. Who truly rewards self-exploration anymore? Culture is spoon-fed to us, infantile generations who dream in colors, but are never bold enough to paint. Those of us who are trapped inside our imaginations and can only view the world through another’s eyes.
I have often imagined a world where I am free from the luxuries of our modern society. However, it is unlikely. Me, a child of generation X giving up my luxuries to chase my dreams of wild exploration. To be lucky enough to travel the world, living in stranger’s homes, casually thumbing the piano keys to a symphony of pasts before my own. To walk barefoot across the warm sands of an oceans fresh beaches, or the rarely touched grains of desert sand, eroded by time.
Though we are not all lost within the physical realms of the world, some of us are lost within the planes of our own mind. Shifting through mental existence, lost. Abandoning consciousness and understandings of right and wrong. Sometimes abandoning our own self-existence. My travel of preference. At one point on her physical trek across the desert, Ms. Davidson wanted to give up; her mental anguish weighing on her courage as she was stalked by the vultures of the paparazzi and the sun alike. “But time moves in only one direction: forward,” she said.
Her journey took her 1700 miles.
Forward is the only direction for a wanderer, a lost physical being.