I think you are bang on the money with this one Serenity.
I know I feel lost a lot of the time, and it is usually because life changes, and we change with it. No one seems to reinforce that with adults, just with teenagers. But realistically if your life is constantly changing, and you yourself are not changing (or changing in a different way) then things can get complicated. I don’t think complication is always a bad thing, it allows us to learn and to grow, and to experience. But we need to learn, and accept that somethings are just going to be the way they are regardless on how we feel about it. And that part makes things harder to deal with, especially when it is what i would call a life road. Like marriage, or a career, something major that you do not have total control over. It can hurt, it can have lots of pleasure. But to feel at a loss i think is normal for plenty of people, because your thoughts and feelings change and progress as time goes on.

Beautifully expressed, and shared with the sense of an unfolding realisation.

Here’s a thought, though. Maybe it’s not as black and white as ‘being in control’ and ‘being lost’? Maybe ‘being lost’ is only ‘being lost’ to the part of us that is concerned with ‘being in conrol’? Maybe even ‘being in control’ is ‘being lost’ to ‘being lost’?

If you have a spare moment, you might like to go back and have a peek at the story I posted on ‘Hidden Recess’ in the Summer - the one called The Wayward Princess. This deals rather beautifully with this apparent opposition of ‘being in control’ - the father/king’s realm – and ‘being lost’ – the wilderness that turns out to have its own rhythms and harmony and completeness.

Tentatively, I‘d also suggest another way this story might fit what you’ve described here. In the king’s realm, which is the domain of (one dimensional) ‘goal-oriented, future-planning, in-control, perfectionism‘ the princess has to be locked away. Is that a metaphor for ‘beauty on the outside’ and ‘pain on the inside’?

xmichra,
I think what can often be surprising is to hear that other people feel lost too. At times it can seem like you look at someone else’s life and you would never suspect they too have feelings of lostness. It is a very good reminder to understand that some things are pretty common to being human and making our way through the changes and challenges of living a life.

James,
I did refresh my memory and in fact am thinking a bit further on this. I went back and read that last part of what I wrote and found it curious, even to myself. I’m not even quite sure why I wrote it. It is a very rare thing for me to offer a kind word to myself on anything, really. And in my writing of late I have not been giving very much thought to any of it, but rather just letting stream through what flows…some of it makes it to this blog, and some of it doesn’t. As I consider the metaphor you suggest I will do some further wondering about this.

At the same time I can easily find the spot inside of myself that is intensely frustrated with lostness, there is this other part emerging that feels “weary” of the frustration, almost as if I have burned myself out to the point of no choice but to just accept that I feel lost so much of the time…and then say…okay, I’m lost. Being lost doesn’t necessarily mean not being found.

Is there something to this lostness? Who knows where lostness may lead, after all…instead of resisting it, I am sort of marinating in it a bit for a change, and not trying so hard to force myself this way or that way. It feels uncomfortable on the one hand, but is also starting to feel a bit liberating as well.

I think you are right about the importance of feeling lost. Lester Young, the jazz saxophonist said something like, “You don’t find God, instead you get lost and then God finds you.”

Rob,
And probably in some of the least expected places and ways!