Get Lost!
End-gaining – we all do it, right? Please tell me we all do it, and that I’m not alone!
Every morning, I start off with a list of goals I’m meant to accomplish that day. At the end of the day, I look back and evaluate what I’ve achieved:
Are there a few things left undone? Got to do better tomorrow.
Everything off the checklist? Hmm, maybe I should have made the list a bit longer…
Heck, I’ve even been known to make checklists when I’m on holiday, so I know if I’ve had a good time or not when it’s all over!
But there is another side to me that loves the wisdom in this phrase:
Life is about the journey, not the destination.
A vacation should really be about the journey, shouldn’t it? The destination, after all, is going to bring you back to where you started; vacations are always round trips. So, shouldn’t I be focusing on the journey, the process, the discovery, the experience? More and more, I’m learning to seek out the pleasure of getting “lost”, both physically and intellectually, and embrace the process of getting to “found”.
My dad, at the Reformation Wall in Geneva.
The idea of “lost” is on my mind a lot these days, as I lost my dad a couple of weeks ago. Lost him permanently, that is. I’ve lost him temporarily many times before on our travels together and visits with him in each of the cities I’ve lived. On his first trip to Geneva, where I live now, it took him all of three minutes to get lost, and 45 minutes to find his way back to our home. He hadn’t thought to take our address along on a short walk around the block and relied on the kindness of a few strangers to direct him back to our place.
His first question to them was, Excuse me, can you please tell me which way is North?
Every visit I’ve ever had with Dad in a new city started with him working out the cardinal directions.
It was a fairly reliable exchange. Dad would ask me which way North was, I’d show him, and he would respond, that can’t be! - followed by a rather lengthy and exasperating explanation about why I was wrong, until he finally worked his way to the conclusion that maybe I was right after all.
I think Dad enjoyed the process of finding his way, to be honest. I think for Dad, it was always about the journey, in work, in travel, in his love of puzzles. It’s always impressed me that my dad genuinely liked working. He had the patience to get any job done, and didn’t concern himself with how long it took, whether he was meticulously freeing his driveway of every snowflake, hanging Christmas lights directly perpendicular to the ground, or carefully returning a used blow-up air mattress back into its original box.
I’ve certainly adopted his way of thinking when it comes to practicing the piano. For me, the whole thrill of a new piece is the process of overcoming the never-before-discovered challenges that lie in wait, then working out for myself why the composer may have written the music that way, and selecting which tools I can apply in response.
As for traveling or moving to a new city, as long as there are a few defined parameters and no deadline, it can actually be quite fun getting lost. Venice, for example, is an astoundingly beautiful place to lose yourself with its deliciously confusing streets and bewildering canal system. Besides, as the islands are relatively small, getting lost isn’t likely to become a permanent condition. What a delightful puzzle it can be, finding your way, and discovering all those amazing sights you might not otherwise have seen!
(Technically, this is in Burano, not Venice…)
So, thanks, Dad, for not just teaching me, but showing me the art of getting lost: I know that as long as I have a goal and a compass to point me North, the journey is going to be a great adventure.
