Find Yourself Getting Lost
“Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.” — Henry David Thoreau
We live in a culture obsessed with maps, schedules, and five-year plans. From the moment we are children, we are handed coordinates—school, career, family, retirement—as if life were a straight road from point A to point B. Yet some of the most profound moments of discovery don’t happen when we are following the path. They happen when the path disappears, when the compass spins, when we find ourselves disoriented and forced to wander.
When I had architecture internships in Baltimore, I would often stray from the polished streets of the business and tourist districts and wander the back alleys, both day and night. That’s where I encountered real people with real stories, places that pulsed with living history. The act of wandering—of letting go of the planned route—taught me more about the city, and about myself, than any blueprint or guidebook could.
Years later, in 2005, I drove across the United States without a map. It was one of the best years of my life. I didn’t have a plan beyond turning down streets and two-lane roads just to see what was there. Some days I found breathtaking vistas, other days small towns that time seemed to have forgotten. Each wrong turn became an invitation, each detour a teacher.
Rebecca Solnit writes in A Field Guide to Getting Lost: “Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark.” I think that’s exactly what those journeys were for me—stepping into darkness and finding not fear, but freedom. Getting lost opened me to mystery, to accidents that turned into discoveries, to the kind of openness that can’t be found when everything is neatly charted.
To get lost is often framed as failure—a wrong turn, a lapse of attention, a moment of weakness. But what if it is exactly the opposite? What if getting lost is the doorway to finding ourselves? In the forest without a trail, in the city street where every building is unfamiliar, in the life moment where the next step isn’t clear—that is where we begin to notice who we really are. Stripped of routine, we lean on curiosity, resilience, and imagination. Psychologists might call it building adaptability; I call it learning to live.
There is a strange freedom in surrendering the need to always know where you are going. By loosening the grip on certainty, you invite surprise. You stumble onto the hidden café where you meet a stranger who becomes a friend. You take the wrong road and discover a vista you never would have sought. You say yes to an uncertain opportunity and realize it is the beginning of a new chapter.
Tolkien reminded us that “Not all who wander are lost.” Yet perhaps the real secret is that being lost is not something to fear at all. It is not about recklessness; it is about allowing life to unfold beyond the edges of the familiar map. When we wander, we don’t just find new places—we find new pieces of ourselves.
