You know that really corny quote that says, "Sometimes it takes being lost to know exactly where you are"? Or something like that. It was on one of those education posters in your 3rd grade teacher's room or it occasionally appears under the new profile picture of a girl you graduated from high school with. And I know, half the time we say to ourselves, "Oh my god, how many times am I going to see that stupid quote? It isn't true". Well, I would like to say that if there was ever a time I was lost, it was these past two weeks in total.
There is a park in Madrid here called, El Parque Retiro, and might I say it probably was the most beautiful and cleanest one I had ever been to. I decided to work out for the day there in the park; I would run for a while and then stop and do some exercises. It was a simple and good idea in thought that is until one path led to another and another after that and then I was simply lost. And no, it wasn't the lost where you could just waltz up to a map and know exactly where to go after that because doing so didn't help either, trust me I tried. I was hot, thirsty, and had sweat covering so much of my clothes that the shade of color changed darker. And so I thought to myself, what do I do now? Why whatever any normal person would do when they are lost; wander.
So I did just that, I walked through the park until I could eventually find myself a way out. The funny thing about all of it was that I found being lost to somehow be a prime opportunity to maybe see things I never had before. To my surprise, I stumbled into a rose garden, watched couples row haphazardly through the lake, and I walked down the alley of Spanish stone statues. Now, though these new sites and visions of Spanish history were all new, somehow I found a lot of them speaking personally to me. Ruby red roses--a favorite of my late grandmother's, gushy romance in the park lake--something my sisters and I would quietly laugh at, and historic stone statues--pieces of Spain's past that my grandfather Burt would find unbelievable while my eyes fell out of their sockets.
Maybe what I thought about in my last post is slowly making itself present. Pieces of my life, trinkets of those I care about or visions of old memories are somehow quietly, and without me really noticing, trickling down into little details of my day-to-day experiences. I think it all seemed to come full circle during my weekend trip with friends to Barcelona. Well now, the change in language dialects and the occasional nudity on the beach was fairly different from America but it seemed that getting lost through the gothic streets of Barcelona opened up the opportunity to see commonality between the Spaniards and I.
At one point, a group of us just
decided to wander, hoping we would find the place we had been in search of.
Along the way, I saw friends chat at local cafes while sipping on their
cappuccinos, soon-to-be mothers and fathers picking out clothes for their child
in Las Ramblas, and then there were little ones going to church with grandma
and grandpa at the famous Barcelona Cathedral. You cannot help but think of
yourself in those very situations--how simple life used to be and how simple it
can be if you choose to look at it in a good way. My Dad told me once about how
he used to hold clothes over my mother's stomach when she was pregnant with us.
"I think it will fit," he used to say and then she would laugh at his
cheesy words and comment, "Jesus, Skip. Sometimes I wonder." There
were plenty of those interactions around me with young couples, both frustrated
at the others' attitudes yet still so in love. It was refreshing to see ironically. I imagined my
friends and I grabbing coffees at Starbucks or buying all the junk food we
could before curling up to watch a movie. And then I saw a little bit of myself
in the kid who was whining about having to go to church with his grandparents.
I was just like him at that age and I am sure he will be seeing himself at my
age now looking back and regretting all the trouble he used to
cause, whether he meant it or not. 
I guess there is an answer to the
riddle. What to do when you're lost? Simple; listen, observe, learn, and move
on. Of course, I cannot observe so much so that I can change my past but I can
learn about who I was and who I should be moving forward from all of this. I
suppose I would like to change that quote from earlier, "Sometimes it
takes getting lost to know exactly where you are and to know exactly where you need to go." When those trinkets
and memories come flooding back in those moments when you are admiring your
surroundings and people passing by, do not regret or wish you could have them
back. Rather, resolve the problem with new directions--new paths to take so as
to move forward toward a place where new memories are made, whether they are
with those here or with the spirits of those who have left us. So the motto of
the story: always carry a cellphone, a map, and an open sincerity toward
yourself and others. Doing so will only make being lost that much more
rewarding and humbling as we follow new, unknown paths in life. Here is to a
better tomorrow.
-M
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