We’ve lost the art of being lost

Taking it day by day, and that being OK.

Since I’ve been staying here in Lisbon, I’ve been taking an approach to life that is uncharacteristic – of myself, and quite likely most successful people I know: I’ve been taking it day by day.

Yes, there is some degree of planning ahead, like when I arranged to stay here a month longer (not least because of the several of you who commented on my last essay, urging me to do so). But for the most part, I’ve been taking a holiday from the habit that’s characterised my last decade: forecasting into the near future, living my life with one foot raised in motion, squinting towards the horizon.

I’ve been so used to pursuing goals. Goals that – I told myself – my happiness was contingent upon. Making more friends. The relationship that eludes me. The second book. The shiny commission. The doubling, tripling of followers, podcast listeners, newsletter subscribers, daily word counts – all the metrics that could prove my life to be a successful one.

But the thing is, I don’t seem to care about those things right now. And I can’t necessarily articulate why that is. My brain feels slower since I’ve been away, a reality that makes me think it’s a shame that we sometimes call someone ‘slow’ as an insult, when really having a slow brain feels quite pleasant. My slower brain is more creative, more receptive to ideas (I’ve started pitching freelance journalism features again, off the back of all the new things I’m suddenly curious about), and more able to take pleasure in everyday joys.

Earlier, I used the word ‘holiday’, but this technically isn’t one. I’ve worked almost every day I’ve been here, based at the bright yellow co-working space that forms the infrastructure to my social life here. It has, however, been a break from the life that, back home in London, I’ve been failing to make a success of (again, by my own very narrow metrics).

We’ve lost the art of being lost, said my friend Iva to me one lunchtime. Which I liked, and later wrote down. Because I’d never heard it phrased like that (Iva phrases things so beautifully). Lost, much like slow, is one of those words that’s used mostly pejoratively. Could we reframe it as an ‘art’, instead?

I’ve felt lost for a while now. But maybe I can make it an art, rather than a stick to beat myself with! After all, there are different ways to be lost: you can be stock-still, or you can be in motion, getting arguably more lost, but still discovering new information all the while – even if that’s confirming the directions you don’t want to go in.

For the past fortnight, at least, I’ve been the latter kind of lost. Without tangible goals, but moving ahead in spite of it, in a way that feels good in the moment rather than serving my future self.

Rather than clinging tightly to that joy, I’ve instead maintained a loose grip. It reminds me of that William Blake poem: He who binds to himself a joy/ Does the wingéd life destroy/ But he who kisses the joy as it flies/ Lives in eternity's sun rise.

And that feels comfortable and rewarding, in a way that trying too hard (and yet, coming up against a brick wall time and time again) has not felt.

If there’s an art to being lost, I’m cultivating it.