8/8: Getting lost

We went to temple last night. Noah and I lit candles for a safe journey. Rabbi Ted talked about fate and freedom. I wish I could quote him, but I will have to paraphrase. Fate is what has already happened. Everything that has happened was necessary to bring us to this moment right now. That is fate. And freedom is how we meet this moment. We can’t control the things that happen to us, but we can choose how we meet this moment. That is our freedom.

This reminded me of a conversation I had with Rabbi Ted one and a half years ago. I was seeing him for counseling during a crisis. Somehow the conversation shifted to my love of travel, and especially my love of traveling alone. I shared with him my favorite moment. When you get off the airplane at the beginning of your journey. And you haven’t read a guide book or booked a hotel room. And you don’t know where you are going or what you are going to do next. You take the airport bus to the center of town. It is that moment, when you get off the bus. I stop, sit on my back pack, and breathe. At that moment, all paths are open. It reminds me of a line in a song, “You think you are lost. Look down. Look down. The next step you take is the path you are one.” Anyway, after sharing that thought, Rabbi Ted said, “Somehow you have found that it is safe to be alone.”

I have meditated on that line numerous times since then. “It is safe to be alone.” I actually wrote an essay once, trying to discover why I have this insatiable love of travel, and what the root of this love is. When I was a child my family used to go to Los Angeles a lot. My father would do business and I would walk. For as long as I can remember, I have been a walker. My parents would put the phone number of the place we were staying in my pocket, along with a dime for the phone call, and I would walk. My goal was not just to walk, my passion was to get lost. I would walk and walk and walk. I did this for years. I remember once that I was so excited when I thought I was lost that I went into a grocery store and bought myself an ice cream as a treat to celebrate the event. And then, upon further reflection during this writing exercise, I realized that the source of my wanderlust goes back even further. I have a very vague memory of a time when I was much younger, maybe three or four years old. I was in a city park I think. Somehow I was separated from my family. A policeman found me, or maybe he was a park ranger. I only remember a uniform. He carried me on his shoulders back to an office. I remember desks and workers. Then the officer gave me an ice cream. When my parents found me, I was happily eating.

All my travel experience may be nothing more than an attempt to relive that moment, how safe it felt to be lost, and then found. Maybe that is what I search for – to be lost and then found.