Being Lost

I am blessed with many things in life. A beautiful daughter who amazes me every day and frankly leaves me wondering how I ever managed to produce such a marvel (even when I am forced to pick up so many dirty clothes before I can even see carpet in her bedroom!) The wonder of this shiny little being (ok teenangster) with her life and it's infinite possibilities stretching out before her gladdens my weary cynical old heart. I digress, this and other blessings aside, a sense of direction is something that I am simply not in possession of.

I am not entirely useless though, oh no, I can read a map, quite well as it happens although I do appear to have reached that point in life when the print appears to have been made to an irritatingly small scale to be read effectively only by the very young or those clutching those magnifiers which are advertised in the rather annoying plethora of excess of supplementary magazines that accompany the weekend newspapers nowadays *shakes fist*.  No I will not succumb to one of those! So to sum up, I get lost quite a lot. I have learnt to think creatively about this conundrum and I would like to impart the wisdom that I have gained from having to live with this frustrating annoyance. 

When you find yourself 'lost', it is most important to tell yourself that you are not, in fact, 'lost', you are instead providing yourself with an opportunity to see things that you would otherwise have missed.

There - it really is that simple. I have seen so many exciting things that I would have otherwise have missed that I have come to consider being lost as a really quite exciting thing sometimes, actually something to be embraced. I have seen boxing hares, swooping sparrow hawks, frolicking foxes, well you get the picture. I have come across picnic spots that I've managed to later revisit, with a picnic! I've stumbled across rare plants and secret stashes of chanterelle mushrooms (I couldn't possibly tell you where they were…no really, I can't bloody well remember!) In a more urban setting I've seen amazing architecture and been able to marvel about how on earth they could have built such a complex design without the benefit of modern machines and mourn the loss of such skilled workers.  I've observed people and their elaborate rituals as they go about the daily grind, so revealing and quite distracting from the pressing problem of being lost. 

So all in all it's all about adjusting your attitude to the situation - I think there may be a lesson there that could be relevant to the rest of my life if only I could extrapolate the meaning… This ability probably irritates the hell out of my family and friends but I feel it adds to my inability to be able to navigate my way out of a paper bag. I actually actively seek it out nowadays by deliberately taking little lanes which are unknown to me.  I urge you to try it, to see the things that you may otherwise miss, you just never know what it is that you may see along the way.

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