Lost and Found

The other day I watched as a man drove his car slowly through our medical center campus. He waited long at stop signs. His head swiveled back and forth. He would turn to speak (or listen to!) the woman he was driving with. Cars would back up behind him, and then rush around. Finally he got the attention of a security guard, and perhaps got the directions he needed.

As these events unfolded I couldn't help but find them remarkable, less because a man was actually asking directions-- in some quarters itself worthy of remark-- than because of the behavior of those behind him. What is it with us that we are so very impatient with those who are lost?

I've noticed this impatience directed toward me when, for instance, I have been trying to find a pt's home. And I've noticed how I "talk" to drivers in front of me when they are going too slow for my conditions-- so maybe I've given impatience as good as I've gotten.

I'm supposing that being lost is something of a universal experience, that all of us have been lost at some point or another in our lives. And I'm guessing that how we experience ourselves when we are lost says something about us-- I'm just not sure what!

I mean, there have been times I've been lost and I've been quite calm, because I felt sure I was going to find my way, eventually. This was even in the time before my car had a nav system! (Sometimes nav systems provide their own ways of being lost. There was a story on NPR the other day about drivers who so believed their nav systems that they didn't believe the road signs and conditions that their eyes could see, so they drove into construction, or where there simply were not roads at all! Who says "faith" doesn't matter? Life's direction if not outcome very much turns on what we believe! Beware of putting too much faith in nav systems that are not Divine!) And there have been other times when being lost simply put me beside myself. I was frustrated and anxious beyond words-- not that I didn't try to find them!

And I think that the reason why men have the reputation of not asking directions is that there is something in us that tells us we ought to know where we are going! From an early age-- earlier, I think, that girls experience, although this may be changing-- boys are asked, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" It is as if we are expected to have an inner compass (vocational and otherwise) and to know how to read it, even as children. So when it comes time to admitting that I really do not know where I am going, I seem to violate some of what it means to be male. A failing of my inner nav system arises as a form of basic incompetence.

Of course, by a certain age, most of us men have been lost in more ways than one in the course of our lives. The driver at the medical center was of a certain age, and I can say I am now myself. Maybe we relax a bit with ourselves when we are older and lost.

Even if that were so, others do not seem to relax with us. There is a pity that goes out to the lost more often than a sense of identification, and in that pitying there is a denial that we ourselves get lost. Being lost is an experience that most of us would just as soon forget, I think.

Yet being lost is most of all a prelude to being found! Almost none of us remain lost forever! Sooner or later and more often than not, we the Lost become we the Found-- with all of the relief and restoration and sometimes sheer joy that goes into that. Yet having been lost is what stays with us, and what it was like to be found flies out of our memory. (I used to find this to be true among the congregations I served as a pastor. Jesus as the Good Shepherd was all about finding the lost, yet I would say the majority of people who heard this as a message they would affirm, thought that the "lost" were people other than themselves-- preferably far from here, in some foreign place, most likely those who had never heard about Jesus as the Good Shepherd! That is, they had completely forgotten how they had ever been lost, and maybe had little sense consequently of how Jesus was connected with their being "found.")

I think when we see someone lost, we could help them most by celebrating with them that they are! We find out certain things about ourselves when we are lost that we never find out any other way. We discover our own resources, for example; we tap into our otherwise unused "survival" skills. And we discover our need of others as we seldom do anytime else. We find out, for instance, who is reliable, and who is not. Sometimes, like in the story of the Good Samaritan, we are surprised about how others behave when we are lost. Those we might have thought we could count on, simply are not there for us when we need them most. This is a good thing to know-- and we don't find it out unless we get lost!

People get lost when they are dying, too. Dying is not just about "losing" one's life, it is a journey towards... And as such, we can get lost upon the way. For one thing, there is often a loss of a sense of purpose ("Why am I living?") that occurs long before we are close to losing our lives. The road of life stretches on before us and we are wandering around wondering where we are and why we are. It is very difficult to rejoice in being lost in these ways, too.

One of our pts, like many of our pts, really, speaks openly about wanting to die. She is at a loss as to "how." She knows where she wants to leave, and she knows where she is going, but how to get from one place to the other is frustrating her. She's losing herself in the process, becoming impatient, vexed by her powerlessness, and at a loss with what to do with herself in the meantime.

On our Team, we've grown accustomed to talking about her as experiencing despair, but I don't think that is so much true as that she does not quite know how to hope. To hope in the midst of feeling lost is quite a spiritual skill, but it isn't like despair rushes in to fill the vacuum. It is more like the experience of being lost offers repeatedly the challenge of hope, and we can become frustrated in ourselves at our inability to meet it. That frustration is not the same as despair, because with despair, we have simply given up our attempts of meeting the challenge of hoping.

And you know, when we are dying and feeling lost, one thing is indeed certain, and that is that Death will find us one day. So it is this "in-between" that is the key, in sociological terms, this "liminal" period, during which we are formed spiritually, tested, shaken, sifted, pruned, prepared, and readied for discovery and being found: this is where the meaning is for us when we are lost.

Which is why, to my self, and to my patients, I say: Feeling lost? "With no direction home, like a rolling stone" (Dylan)? Rejoice! For look at what you are finding out about yourself that you never would otherwise! And since being found is in one way or another a certainty, and the only real questions are by whom and when-- then enjoy this time of being lost! How blessed we are, to be lost!

And when I see someone who is lost, I say: Good for you! What a wonderful opportunity! I may even ask: May I join you? May I come and be lost with you?

And they look at me like I'm crazy...

But that's OK. It's all good...