In praise of getting lost – SportOutdoor24

Getting lost is an increasingly rare experience. Indeed, now getting lost is something we no longer want to do, which we avoid in every way and which we also stigmatize. As if getting lost were bad, something negative, a disvalue. GPS, maps, navigators have totally eliminated the idea that you can get lost, and affirmed that not finding the way on the first try is something inconceivable. It’s true in the city, and it’s also true in nature, it’s true for adults and it’s also true for children.

We are no longer willing to lose our way

We want the path to be perfectly marked, and if it’s not, we want the navigator to tell us where to go. We always want to take the shortest and fastest route and with less traffic, and we ask the navigator. And when we travel, on foot, by car or by bike, our attention is all on the indications and not on our surroundings. We cross cities, landscapes, natural areas looking at the digital map and not at the natural or man-made environment around us. So much so that, alone and without a navigator, we are often unable to repeat the same route.

In praise of getting lost

But are we sure that this always having everything under control, this always knowing exactly where we are, where we come from and where we are going is something positive?

You will find your way if you first have the courage to lose yourself – Tiziano Terzani

Getting lost is a turning point. Getting lost is a moment of growth. Getting lost means stepping out of your comfort zone. And this is true both physically and psychologically. Let’s pay attention, or try to remember: when we don’t know where we are, our senses, our perceptions, our attention sharpen. Everything about us is projected towards the discovery, recognition and analysis of what surrounds us and it can help us find our way: which side is the sun on? Is the path beaten or not? Have I seen these buildings before? Taking the metaphor to extremes, moving by looking only at the navigator can lead to getting stuck in an alley with your car (this really happened to a man who was going to the restaurant in Meana di Susa, in the Turin area).

Learning to get lost is a moment of awareness

Learning to get lost (a little) is instead a moment of great awareness, of oneself and of the world around us. Kant would speak of enlightenmenti.e. oflearn to use one’s intellect without the guidance of otherspsychologists would speak of “be present to yourself“.

I’ve already got lost here once, so I know where we are – Erling Kagge

Getting lost, learning to rely on your own resources, feeling in control of your own destiny is a moment of growth. It’s a bit of a cliché, but getting lost is a time of crisis, and in crises there are both dangers and opportunities and the opportunities. The same Chinese ideogram representing the word “crisis” contains symbols of both danger and opportunity.

It’s when you get lost that resilience kicks in

It is valid in the stages of life, it is valid in the economy, it is valid in relationships, it is valid in the history of peoples and nations: it’s when you feel lost that resilience kicks in, this beautiful word that means knowing how to find the resources to overcome events without breaking. And getting lost, in this sense, also leads to self-discovery, of the way we react to adversity, of the way we face the unexplored territories of life.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Albert Einstein

Getting lost leads to uncharted territory, and reasonably to discovering new things. We can experience it in the small of our daily lives: how many times have we passed that alley and kept going straight on? And how many times instead, due to distraction, have we taken the “wrong” road, discovering a shop, a park or a monument that we didn’t know?

Know how to recognize the unexpected

Now it is customary to call her Serendipity, the art of finding something unexpected (and to be able to recognize it) and it is something that also has to do with freedom, and that we must learn to cultivate, learning a little to get lost. The German philosopher Wilhelm Wundt called it heterogenesis of ends, or unintended consequences of intentional actions: deliberately getting a little lost to unintentionally discover something new. And there’s no need to go who knows where, or put yourself in danger. Microadventures also begin just beyond your front door.

Getting lost is a time for problem solving. And our brains are wired to solve problems. It’s a bit like connecting the dots, or inserting the missing letters: we get lost, we begin to piece together the information we collect with the senses, and our brain develops a mental map that allows us to make a decision on the direction to take. There are people – few – that they really don’t have this ability, due to a brain dysfunction (it’s called DTD – Developmental Topographical Disorientation) that makes them get lost even within the walls of the house. But with appropriate exercises and field training they manage to improve significantly: everything takes place in the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for short and long-term memory, spatial memory and orientation, and it works the same way as when we are learning a new language. What’s more, the same mechanism would appear to be why as well males have greater ability to orient themselves in space than womena discovery we had already talked about in this article.

Getting lost is a creative and subversive act

Finally get lost it is also a creative act. We can’t always be rational in moments of bewilderment, although we wish we could, to rely only on what we can control. But let’s make a hypothesis: we are in a wood, the GPS doesn’t pick up, we have no maps or indications. We can rationally analyze the context – where is the north, where is the valley floor – but no choice will ever be absolutely safe and certainand it is at this moment that the creative process is triggered, which is another piece of the problem solving process.

In the end getting lost a little isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because it can lead to a deeper learning of oneself, one’s goals, one’s interests, one’s physical and mental resources. And ultimately to grow as people.

Photo by Paul Dragunas on Unsplash

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