Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes besides you are not lost.
Wherever you are is called here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breaths. Listen.
It answers, I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
Now two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still.
The forest knows where you are. You must let it find you.
Being Lost
Looking at everybody, there is a sense of certainty about them – belonging to society; a part of something bigger, and rooted in something they really believe in. And then there I am. For as long as I can remember, feeling like the outlier, the outcast – never fitting in, never belonging. It is as if something must be profoundly wrong with you; you are not of this place, you are not among your people, you are not woven into the same fabric as others. That is what being lost has been: no home to relax into, no ground solid enough to stand on, and no path clear enough to walk. When I see another lost soul, I recognize without even having to talk.
Sometimes you are lost in life, like an eternal, never-ending dream. And other times it comes at sharp junctures. A breakup, divorce, a career you swore really believed in that would fulfill you, a person you believed would stay forever who did not, a belief system you defended for years, only to find it collapsing in front of you. In truth, it is life pushing you to and challenging you to question who you are. Hence, the feeling of the ground sliding below you. And what could be more rootless than a man who no longer knows who he is?
So often when we feel lost, we sit alone – on the edge of the bed, with teary eyes, thinking, analyzing, praying, hoping someone will come to save us. Sometimes we cling to any idea or a person we grab. And other times, we try to outrun the feeling by drowning in addictions of food, travel, movies, work, whatever keeps us busy.
The poem is profound because it’s plain. It says, trees ahead and bushes beside you are not lost. You may feel lost, but not life around you. Not the strangers passing by you, not the home you live in, not the food on your plate, not the trees you pass by on the way to the office. They are not lost. They may look strange, but meet them as a powerful stranger. The message is simple: you, my dear, may be lost but not the life around you.
Listen. It answers, I have made this place around you. Listen: a direct teaching to pay attention to what stands in front of you: the flicker of a bird’s wing, the smile of a stranger, even the rude edge of a friend. Attention is the key that unlocks life. We beg for grand answers with our heads buried in the pillow, crying, but sometimes the answer is smaller: two steps to the kitchen, a warm breakfast. One bite, and the world tastes good again; you forget you were pleading for revelations a few minutes ago. As Alan Watts would say: “The universe does not speak in grand gestures, big revelations like you fantasize, it whispers like a shy, nervous lover. “ And to hear the whispers, we need to listen, listen very, very closely to this moment.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here. How many times have we tried to outrun this feeling: lost, lonely, uprooted, hoping someone or something would hand us a ready-made answer? And yet, again and again, we find ourselves back in the same place. Running doesn’t work. Ignoring doesn’t work. Life has a way of returning us to this ground until we face it. There is no escape.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you. You are surely lost. Stand still. An invitation to be silent, to listen. If you cannot hear what life whispers, if you cannot see what these small things are trying to show you, then you, my friend, are surely lost. To be lost is not simply to feel adrift, but to walk blindly, ignoring the life around you, not paying attention, not listening. Because it is through these quiet gestures that life guides, that life reveals the path.
The forest knows where you are. You must let it find you. An invitation to trust life, for life knows where we are, and where we are meant to go. Yet we keep thinking we must always be certain, always enough, always know what to do. But then, what is the point of living? What is the point of being surrounded by life, by people, if we insist on carrying all the answers alone? This urge to always know is nothing but a way to feel superior, above life, above others, believing that if we don’t know where we’re going, we are somehow less. But being lost is simply not knowing where to go. And life asks nothing more of us than to admit that truth, to say, I don’t know. In that acknowledgment, something shifts: we allow life to guide us. Yes, it feels almost impossible at first, because it goes against all our training – science, education, culture, that demands we find answers at any cost. To let go, to stand in the unknown, sounds like risk. But that is exactly what life demands of us when we are lost: to surrender, so it can lead us, so it can find us.
To feel lost is a privilege, for you are standing at the peak of your intelligence. You don’t know where to go, so you must turn towards something even more intelligent than you – that is, the universe itself. This is the only way to grow, to feel lost again and again. -Alan Watts
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