Lost and Found

by Rev. Amari Magdalena

How tight is your box of routines and habits?  How habituated are you?  Do you take the same route to your familiar places all the time or perhaps mix it up with one or two other, yet familiar, routes?  How much diversity do you have in your average day?

Why am I asking you this?  I’m exploring how willing you are to get lost; to lose your familiar bearings. How much do your trust yourself to find your way back to the familiar when you get a bit twisted around in your life?

In my own life, I’ve found that when I feel a certain stagnation or lack of newness, I usually recognize the need to move outside of my assumptions, routines, idea of stability.  In the past, I might physically move.  Now I recognize that it is not necessarily what is needed to break up stale energy.

Our Western culture tends to promote a belief in attaining some thing or goal, followed by great satiation. We are then to languish in our achievement and be completely happy.  Isn’t that what many of our advertisements suggest to us?  And, many people, reach their pinnacles and after basking, a deep dissatisfaction and perhaps a tad of depression sets in.

Why?  It is my deep belief that life is intended to be dynamic from our first splash in the birth waters to our last assignment to fire or earth.  It [sic.] life is to be lived with adventure and discovery.  Never was the design to be static.  I observe nothing in nature that is simple static.  If it were, early death would ensue.

Purposefully changing up our routines and willingness to try the untried, immeasurably contributes to a life well lived.  I’m not saying we must throw out the proverbial baby with the bath water, simply that we make some changes in how we immerse ourselves in this rather short span of life.

How many times have you passed a street that you’ve never been down? Have you seen an exit on the highway to a town you’ve never been to?  Watched a genre of movies that you normally would not choose? Read controversial opinions on subjects near and dear to you.  Do you vary what you eat? Could you put your pants on the other leg first?  Have you tried writing with your non-dominant hand until it was reasonably legible?

Have you made a bucket list, no matter your age?  Would you be willing to make such a list for each decade of your life and do what’s on the list?  Are you signing up for new courses, workshops, or seminars on topics unrelated to your primary interests?

Perhaps we do go around more than once.  Maybe reincarnation is real.  But wouldn’t you want to make the best of this life, just in case it is the only one or the completion one?  Are you willing to risk getting a bit lost to challenge yourself and discover more and more about you and this precious life?

Trust yourself.  Get lost. Go down that new street.  Explore that unknown city.  Try jumping out of a plane or go up in a hot air balloon. Do something that is completely out of the ordinary for you.  Get lost and discover the wonderful person that lives within you.  Fall in love with yourself over and over again as you find out just how magnificent you truly are.