Get Lost - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/136/you-are-here

I knew who I was, where I was, and what was going on in my life more in a different country dealing with complete strangers in a language that I hardly knew, than I do as an adult.

My time in Sweden was filled with a lot of times getting lost. This had a healthy amount of it dealing with the fact that my president, the guy in charge of telling us where to go and what to do, was known under the nickname of "Wildcard Karlsson" because he would do the most backwards, off the charts, weird things when moving missionaries around. His calling card move was the double transfer. This is when he would take two missionaries that had gotten to know an area, had worked with the people there, gotten to gain the trust of the investigators, members, and potentially the town drunks, and then rip them away and plop two new missionaries in the exact same area.

This happened often enough that I became used to the fact that the first time in any area was a guessing game from both me and my companion of where we were supposed to go, who we were supposed to meet with, and we were going to be lucky if we made it home anywhere close in time to get dinner in our stomachs.I got lost on my way to my own apartment so many times, simply because the area was new for both me and the guy I was with, and we got lost. We'd get turned around, sit on the wrong bus, not know the schedule for the buses on holidays and how they were different than normal days, and the list goes on.

Even though I got turned around, lost, and was living in a different world that wanted nothing to do with me, I didn't feel lost.

I think a large part of that not feeling lost even though I was physically lost, was the fact that there were rules. There were such strict rules and regulations for us as missionaries that I could be put in the weirdest situation ever and I knew exactly what I was supposed to do. If WWIII broke out and I had to abandon Sweden, I knew the exact rules of which train I should get on, which chapel to meet at, and where to go. I knew what I should do if my companion ever got lost without me. I knew what I should do if I got mugged. I knew what I should do, when I should do it, and how I should do it. I had rules about everything and in that light, I got to understand why people join the army.

I always hated the idea of the armed forces. In a way, I still hate it a bit.

I don't know what it is, but taking away people's individuality and 'breaking' them into something that you want and essentially taking away their idea to rationally process or answer anything for themselves is really scary for me. There is no room for questioning, it is only sir, yes sir. Say what you will about Hollywood actors that can ask for the permission to speak freely, in war you don't get to play that game. You have orders and you follow them, simply because some guy told you to do it. There are rules and you have to follow them or you, and the people around you die.

I used to wonder why anyone would ever want to have that life; why anyone would want to give up their ability to think, question, and understand the world.  I never understood it, but the brief glimse I got of it in Sweden, it makes sense. Places like that are comfortable. You don't have to ask questions. You don't have to think about where you are, what you're doing, or the difficulties of anything else. Your job is one job, and it is hammered into your head. There's no need to worry about your future, your life outside that job, or anything else. That one calling is yours, and that's comfortable because your world isn't big and scary. You have time settings to everything. Even in the worst days of combat (or on your mission) you can look at your deployment papers and hopefully see an end date, where you can say by THIS date, I'm done. It's just one day at a time and I can make it to that date.

You can drag me through the mud, spit at me, slam doors in my face, laugh at me, humiliate me, make me the most depressed I've been in my entire life, and make me feel like a failure, but I can get through it because I know that there's an end. I know that I can make it through just one more day. You can get shot at, blown up, cut up, torn up, and see the most horific things in the world, but hopefully there is that end date, where you know that at that date, you're coming home and you won't have to deal with it any more. You can do anything for just one more day when you know there's an end.

Those things don't exist in the real world.

There's no structure to real life, and that's where it gets scary. Instead of having a person moving you around, telling you where to be, how to live, and how long to live it, you get nothing. You're left with yourself, and that's scary. When you leave a structured place, be it school, family, military, mission, or whatever else, and you're left out for yourself, there's infinite possibilities, and no longer are there rules for everything because those rules don't apply any more. You can stay out as late as you want, wear whatever you want, do whatever you want, and see whatever you want, and there's no one telling you that you can't. There's nothing there to give you structure, other than yourself, and that's scary.

Trusting yourself is when you get lost, because there's doubt. You're only lost when you doubt yourself, or the structure that got you where you're at. I could be in the middle of Sweden in a town I couldn't pronounce with no idea of how to get home, but I didn't feel lost because I knew what got me there. Military members can be in the middle of a warzone in a teritory that no one has ever really mapped because no one lives there, and they're not lost because they know what got them there. But, if I got lost in the middle of Sweden now, in that same town with those same circumstances I would feel lost because I would doubt myself. How in the world did I get myself there? How am I going to get myself out? Before I trusted in the person and people involved with getting me into that circumstance that I knew they'd get me out, now I'm the only one left.

Now when I get myself lost, I'm the one that has to solve it. I don't have someone to lean up against. When I'm lost with my career and have no clue what to do, there's no rules that I can follow to get an easy out, I have to figure it out on my own and I have no clue what to do so that's really hard to do. When I get lost with how to have a happy marriage, I feel lost because there's no structure. There's no solution. There's no path that I can follow because there's no one that has set up a set of rules for me that I can just follow and know that it works.

I get why people stay in the military as long as possible. I even understand those people that want to relive their missionary, high school, or even college days, because those were the days where they felt in control. Those were the days that they didn't have to worry and felt like they knew what was going on in their life. They weren't lost.

You can't get lost when you don't have to be in charge of everything, and that's why you should get lost.

Go get lost. Get in a situation where no one can help you out of it. Go figure it out on yourself. You got yourself out in the middle of a forest in the middle of the night, now you have to figure out how to get back home. Go get yourself into a scary career, a major relationship, a life that you're not certain of, because that's when you have to grow. When you get lost, you come up with crazy solutions and get creative. When you get lost you push yourself to become better and find a way to make things work. When you get lost you come together with the people that you're lost with, and you create something better.

Feeling like you have no clue what you're doing, that you have no guide in front of you, and no one to help you doesn't make you lost, it makes you a trailblazer, an adventurer, or even a pioneer. That feeling where you're overcome with fear because everything is riding on you to come up with a solution and you're still stumbling around in the dark trying to understand which way is up is a frightening feeling, but it's in those moments that you can really do something great.

I get it. Avoiding feeling lost is a nice feeling. It's comfortable. It makes it so you have stability and never question yourself, but it's not worth it.