on feeling lost

Feeling lost is sensational, ecstatic, wonderful feeling. It has the sweet and bitter taste of being scared to death all the while knowing you'd be saved. It is fragrant nuance of anticipation, a mixture of hope and despair, it speaks of airiness, lightness, of being not of this earth,it has a touch of ethereal, of things yet unknown and mysterious. It has the promise of being found or of finding something, someone, some place, or some idea.

I love feeling lost.

Why are we so hung up on knowing where we are, obsessed with directions, with pathways, with maps both mental and physical. Why as people are we so attached to the idea of permanency, of being in a particular place at a particular time where we can be found by all and sundry at all forsaken hours of the day and night. What is this universal urge to be and mind it, not only be, but, be at a particular place???? Our cards announce who we are what we do and yes where we can be found whether anyone needs to know that or not. We must tell the world where we are at as though that information actually subsists our existence. That it is not enough for me to just be, I, Lubna Khan must be either in Karachi, or at home or at a particular place for me to be real. We get so uncomfortable if we don't know where someone is located at, we cannot perceive them to actually exist. We must ask when we call people on cells where they at? why? the whole idea of mobile is hey? that it is mobile!

Just like all other actions this one is for others. It is as if we cease to be if we are not identified with a specific place at all times. We are irritated with people who don't exactly tell us where they are at and find them disconcerting. Our beings are so permeable to us that they seem to blend into the surroundings if we don't keep them distinctly apart. Our physical surroundings centre us, literallyproviding us a place in the scheme of things and make us who we are. We start to define ourselves from the outside in rather than inside out. Our outer reality becomes more important than our thoughts. When someone asks us where we are why don't we ever tell them where we are in our minds, in our thoughts why always in temporal terms the answer is given and also sought to begin with.

This fear of losing our bearings our familiar terrain our geography is the fear that keeps us from being free, it keeps us from thinking what we want to think, because at all times we are so concerned with being in a particular place that we chain ourselves to that spot, we enslave our spirits to that space and dread to leave it lest we get lost.

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