More lostness

“Hey, Logan, I was told to ask you about opening the doors.”

I’m settling into a Saturday afternoon writing session. Early October can have warm days like this one: 77, sunny, little breeze. Bread Garden Market can still open its wide glass doors in the cafe area, which makes their deep wine and beer options especially inviting for the people emptying out of Kinnick or strolling through the pedmall or needing next to no special reason for a sandwich and beer on a warm, sunny, fall day.

I’m among them, except I bought a bag of chips to go with my beer. The wavy, original kind. A pickle would be the only upgrade I’d be willing to make at present. But I’m already sitting.

Days like this one invite the deepest feelings of lostness. It’s my Sabbath, so I don’t have work to immerse myself in. Writing invites contemplation. Contemplation demands honesty. Honesty forces me to look at all my feelings.

I’m no longer afraid of feeling lost. It’s been too present in the past two years not to find a way to acclimate to it or drown it in alcohol, drugs, or some other addiction. I’m fortunate to have acclimated, to perhaps even say that I’ve grown to appreciate this feeling, to acknowledge, “I feel lost.”

Why I feel lost is a matter I’m not ready to write about. Today is an opportunity to remember how I face lostness.

It’s a tangled affair acclimating to lostness is. My childhood taught me that being lost was a fiery affair, to expect the sulfur and brimstone of hell. The goal was always to get “found”: I once was lost but now I’m found. That was saving grace, an acknowledgement that I was existentially okay. Ticket punched for heaven. Acknowledging I was “lost” felt like a denial of my faith, of what my parents/church/Mennonite culture taught me to value. I “went forward” at 12 and 16 to find foundness. I accepted a call to ministry. I worked in churches as a college minister, worship leader, and small group leader. I did all the things to validate my foundness.

“I feel lost.”

“I am lost.”

I’m lost.

I would be lying to say it’s easy to own. It’s not. There’s still a “bump”—a jolt, if you will—when acknowledging lostness. And remembering this journey that’s me to this place of open and public acknowledgement helps me remember how I face it.

Curiously.

One of my marketing clients had some information about uncertainty—its feeling and bodily presence—that changed me. Apparently, our brain registers uncertainty as “error.” When we feel uncertain, we believe that we have made a mistake. I’m not here to explain why it equates uncertainty and error any more than I’m willing to attempt an explanation of string theory. My guess is that the Great Equivocation stems from our superpower of adapting to new environments: uncertainty keeps us alert, and it fades when we become familiar with our spaces and uncertainty fades.

That’s good enough for me.

And the effect of this information changed me. Uncertainty—i.e., lostness—was suddenly the bully with the glass jaw if I had the courage to exercise curiosity. What I also noticed is that I often felt uncertain. A friend didn’t answer a WhatsApp message, and I felt uncertain. My kids didn’t respond to a text—I felt uncertain. I wasn’t sure how to respond to answer a client; I must have done something wrong. And then the big ones came.

The University of Iowa couldn’t renew my teaching contract.

My co-parent filed for divorce

I started a business.

Mornings felt the cortisol spike the most. It helped learning from my Wisconsin-friend-living-in-Brazil-friend Hannah that cortisol helped us poop in the mornings. A little bit of certainty. But as a whole, morning anxiety was off the charts.

I’m glad to say definitively that it was. Days like today remind me that I’ve learned to ask the courageous questions such as “What could come from afternoons like these?” or “What could I learn from this situation?” and “How could I learn to love less selfishly here?”

Curiosity was the silver bullet, and I’m learning it’s power again today.