I think most people have felt lost at least a few times in their lives.

For myself that feeling of being lost tends to come around quite often. Maybe even weekly. It used to really get me down.

This may sound strange but I felt bad for feeling lost not so much as being lost. Perhaps because I thought I had to know with certainty what I ‘should’ be doing or what my ‘purpose’ was and it was this thinking lead to being stuck… Not being lost. (Nothing will bring about the feeling of being lost and stuck like seeking a certain purpose. Purpose doesn’t exist as something to find.) Today when I feel lost I don’t feel down or beat myself up about it. I know at such times it only indicates that my eyes are closed.

“Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.”  –  Henry David Thoreau

That may sound trite but I suspect its a truth. Being lost a tipping point between despair and adventure. The Question being asked by life; will you be the hero of your story?

Man’s true nature being lost, everything becomes his nature; as, his true good being lost, everything becomes his good.    Blaise Pascal

• This reply was modified 5 years, 8 months ago by Peter.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 8 months ago by Peter.

Dear B:

You wrote that you are “lost in life, strolling around without any real purpose…stuck, unsure what to do or where to go.. I have friends but sometimes I wonder what their agenda is.. For a 24 year old I do not feel ‘young & free’.. as though I don’t really have a life or don’t really fit it as such”.

In a later thread you described a childhood experience: your mother married a man who was “very much like a child, constantly stropping around. He drank most evenings and didn’t particularly like me around… He would often leave my mum for periods at a time, leaving my mom devastated. Me and my mum’s husband would often clash as I would stick up for mum”.

I think that if you get clarity about this very childhood experience, which led to you leaving that home at 18, you will no longer be lost in life. And you will no longer be confused about people’s agendas, includig the agendas of your ex boyfriend, his mother and his sister (your most current confusion, in your more recent thread).

For the purpose of encouraging your clarity about people’s agendas, I ask:

When your mother’s husband left her at any one time, you were happy, weren’t you? But she was devastated. Why wasn’t she happy too when he left, happy that the person who was harming her daughter was gone- why did she want him back knowing her daughter was hurting in his presence?

– in other words, what was your mother’s agenda in regard to this man?

anita