Futile – the one word which sums up efforts to impart life experience on my ears. Of course I love to listen, but until I experience the utter frustration of a foiled plan, or the crushing realization that I really should have taken that cautionary word a little more seriously, I rarely seem to learn. Nothing quite compares to the trial, error, and consequent growth that buds from the dirt of first-hand experience.
Being a teacher myself, I understand the benefits of a good one. For me, the best teachers have been Impetuous Action, Spontaneity, and Discomfort. From each of those (definitely multiple times over), I’ve learned valuable, life-long lessons that are sure to stick like graffiti – you can’t wander by and not help but notice.
Most times, I’ve learned the hard way.
So perhaps if someone would have said, “Hey, going on a roady with some guy you’d like to leave behind in the Ex’s of Past maybe isn’t the greatest idea,” on the eve of my first-ever road trip through Europe, I might have stopped and considered this for a fraction of a moment before continuing to hop on a flight that would whisk me to Belgium.
One year ago, I did indeed embark on that adventure. In my mind, it still exists as one of the most oxymoronic experiences of my life. When I think of the most serene moment of kayaking I’ve ever beheld, I think of Belgium; Belgium also happens to be the place where aforementioned not-so-significant other mashed up the side of our rented Mini Cooper and really did claim a spot in Ex’s of Past, all on the eve of our last departure to none other than: Amsterdam. While this is often remembered by most as a blur of drugs, bikes, prostitutes, and specially concocted brownies, I remember it as a blur because of how alike everything looks: each canal, each bridge, and each street.
…It’s also the city not-so-happy ex decided to abandon me in, all-the-while taking our one map with him.
At the time, I couldn’t see it, but life was about to give me one of the best lessons I could ever receive: why being lost is the most valuable human experience. Heart palpitating, palms slick against the bars of my bike, vision narrowing in while it twirled and swirled across a landscape that looks exactly the same corner after corner, bridge after bridge; everything that’s unfamiliar becomes an assault on the senses and slips that fearful seed – What if? What now? – into the forefront of your imagination. Suddenly, I was doomed to forever be lost in Amsterdam, my classes needing a new teacher, my parents having the Canadian Embassy searching for my lifeless body, and all-the-while I would be being inundated by the not-so-lucrative sex trade, made a commodity of tourism myself.
But that’s the worst-case scenario that a frantic mind pitches in moments of paranoia. Thankfully, none of that happened. Actually, a drama student attending the local university found me stopped in the street, day-dreaming with lachrymose eyes, after having just told two other discombobulated tourists that I was probably more lost than they were. Kindly, he escorted me back to the bike rental I needed to return to with about ten minutes to spare before my Visa was – yet again – vanquished by extra (and unwelcome) charges of a late rental return. With it returned my sanity and inner peace.
Being lost in Amsterdam was indeed the cornerstone to one of my best – yet most trying – lessons from the most thwarting of my three best teachers – Discomfort. The fact that I came out of that with most of my sanity (and hadn’t been delivered into Amsterdam’s finest brothel in the process) was proof enough that maybe being lost wasn’t something I should avoid in the future, but rather something to embrace. If you’ve ever survived a wrong turn, the wrong train, or even a spiteful ex hijacking a coveted map (and survived to tell the tale), then chances are there’s a lot more resilience and resourcefulness kicking around than you imagined.
Hopefully, I will find my future self lost on more occasions than I have been in the past. Being lost seems to halt your immediate attention on what’s exactly in of you, therefore dismantling distracted consideration for the future and past. I can’t dream up a better definition of living in the moment if I try.
Lesson learned? If being lost means growth – growing a little more independent, a little calmer, and a little more at peace with the unknown – then I need it. Being lost and being at peace are closely aligned, if you’ll let them be, so I’ll continue to look for those keyhole opportunities where being lost means being found.
Share your story of independence in our Independence Travel Writing Contest. Free Entry. Cash Prizes.
