One of my favorite dialogues in Seinfeld is from the first appearance of J. Peterman.
Elaine: Oh, God. I’m so sorry. I don’t even know where I’m going.
J. Peterman: Well, that’s the best way to get someplace you’ve never been.
It sounded profound, and it was decidedly so to establish the basic foundation of the J. Peterman’s character for dramatic effects. But ignoring the comedic effect, that line stays with me for a different reason: it gives me more reasons to keep getting lost all the time.
You can feel lost due to a lack of directions to where you want to be. Then you can also feel lost due to a lack of destinations. I solely belong to the latter case.
As I got older, I lost many memories of my childhood. One in particular stayed with and kept coming back to me vividly.
It was one evening. I sneaked out of my house and went to my favorite reading place: the nearby bridge. As usual, cars, trucks, bikes, and more, hundreds and thousands of them, passed by the nearby busy Avenue 1A.
I had my copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude. I was at the chapter where Remedios the Beauty turned into butterflies and ascended to heaven. The traffic was heavy, and I loved the sound of silence found only in the midst of the constant noises. As the evening came and the sun started to set, the vehicles turned on their headlights, all mixing and flashing around. And I started to cry uncontrollably.
I was a small little boy. Less carefree than some other little boys, but carefree still. I never asked myself where I was. I never asked myself who I was.
It was at that very moment that I felt lost for the first time in my life. I was there, sitting still, and the world was rushing around me. I was quiet, the world yelling. I was nothing, the world everything.
The trucks, the cars, the motorcycles, etc. they weren’t just passing by. They were flying. They weren’t just turning on their headlights. They were shining brightly themselves. And I could not fly, and I could not shine. I was as lost as the sound of my crying in the midst of the sound of heavy traffic around.
Then before I realized myself, I was laughing. Again, uncontrollably.
Because, lost as I was, I thought of something really really funny, given that context. That I was on this earth. This earth was part of a solar system. That solar system was part of a galaxy. And that galaxy was just hurtling through space to nowhere. I was standing still, but I was also part of that cosmic journey.
In retrospect, there was nothing remotely funny. I was laughing due to the sheer irony of that thought. And years later, I still laughed every time I recalled that day, the day I learnt something very important.
I feel lost all the time, that’s true. However, I am not being lost. I am getting lost. The galaxy is carrying me to the middle of nowhere. Since I have no control over where it is carrying me, I don’t have to care where I would end up. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not that I don’t have a destination: I choose not to have a destination.
And all that matters is that I am getting lost, all the time, every time, then, now, and always will be.