Zora Hurston once said, “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” The years that will replace the question marks at the end of your sentences with full stops will come from the years of aimlessly floundering and feeling lost.
You will find yourself lost in more than one instance in your life, and every time it will feel worse than anything that came before it. But if you chose to open this, it means you acknowledge that you’re lost and admitting it is the first step. Admit it courageously because there’s nothing to be ashamed of, as we all feel lost and invisible sometimes. Some will notice the feeling early on, while others will wander through most of their lives unaware that they’re being dragged instead of drawing their own paths. So, congratulations on knowing that the life you have right now is not what you want or that the persona you have established for yourself is not what you want to be known as.
Now you feel adrift, nostalgic for the past, anxious about the present and terrified of the future. It’s okay! This means that you don’t want to settle for an okay sort of life. If you look around, you will find that things aren’t actually that bad and you’ll wonder why you are so unbelievably terrified of yourself and of everything around you. You will realize it’s because you’re scared of one day waking up to a monotonous sort of good enough life when your plan was to lead an incredible life.
You’re lost because you’re scared of settling for less than you deserve. You’re lost because you haven’t found that certain something that pulls you to immerse yourself completely in it. Right now, you’re taking a bite of everything that life is offering you, but never accepting any with a firm handshake. That’s also okay! This is what the years that ask questions are for. It’s for you to nibble on different things and see for yourself what interests you and what bores you to death. It’s for you to be lost and reeling, trying and failing and pushing yourself to always do better next time.
I know that you would rather be anywhere else but where you are right now. You can’t figure out what your next step should be and you’re going slightly crazy. There are infinite routes you can take in your life, and there will never be a secret handbook that lets you know which one is the ‘right’ one. This alone should leave you feeling pretty lost. You will spend too much time worrying on which ones should you take and which opportunities you should let go of. The most important thing to remember is to always do what feels right for you. Do not base your life’s decisions on what makes other people happier and more comfortable. This is exactly how you end up feeling more lost than ever.
You feel like so much is happening in your life, but it still feels empty and drained. You need to know that all the seemingly useless happenings you are tired of will all lead up to something one day. It’s the oldest phrase in all the books, but everything does happen for a reason that we don’t know yet. And it doesn’t matter that we don’t know the reasons why things happen, because the only thing you should know right now is that there’s more to you than whatever it is you are doing now. There’s a better functioning version of you out there. And with a lot of patience, effort and virtue you will get there. So for now, choose lost any day over being stuck, over being bored, over being mean and over settling.
And I’d like to end this by sharing the words of Charles Bukowski: “There is a place in the heart that will never be filled; a space. And even during the best moments, and the greatest times, we will know it.”
