Lose Yourself In the Music, the Moment... The Roads?

The other day in our Elder’s Quorum (for the non-Mormons in my audience, that’s the hour of church that we meet as just boys), we had a lesson on marriage. Surprise, surprise: this is BYU. This is completely off-topic from what I’m going to say, but I would like to take some time to point out that with two exceptions, the Church would disapprove if anyone in that room got engaged. I can’t help but feel that the time would have been better spent in instructing us how to be good missionaries, not good husbands… Alas, such are the tribulations of a student at BYU.

            Anyways, back to the topic I was going for. At one point in the lesson, our instructor was trying to demonstrate to us how men and women are good for each other. He used the example of getting lost, asking how many of us would stop to ask for directions. Two or three of my peers raised their hands, at which point he chuckled and told them they were girls. He then asked who would say they “weren’t really lost in the first place”. The rest of the class raised their hands. The lesson continued on.

            I kept my hand down. Neither of those descriptions fit me. When I’m driving and realize that I don’t know where I am, I’ll admit that I’m lost, and then I’ll smile as wide as I can. I love getting lost.

            In fact, I love getting lost that I specifically set up opportunities to do so. As I mentioned in an earlier post, most of my favorite memories with my beloved car involved me driving around, lost and directionless.

            I realize that this is a bit of anomaly. (Then again, is anyone reading this surprised? I’m Aaron Wilson. EVERYTHING I do is an anomaly. Sometimes I wonder if this is too much of a problem.) So once again, I’d like to try to open my mind to the general public about this issue and see if I can truly explain myself. Without further ado, why it is perfectly acceptable to like getting lost while driving:

            First off, you have to take the whole “time crunch” issue out of the equation. I hate being late to something important, and getting lost while you desperately have to be somewhere is a terrible feeling. However, if a job/grade/eternal salvation isn’t at stake in some form, few things beat being lost. I think that one of the primary reasons I feel this way is that I’m a big fan of mazes. I’m pretty sure my subconscious would be partying like it's the end of the world if someone invaded my dreams, Inception-style. Basically, I see a city as being a massive maze, except a little bit easier. I mean, there are signs! The thrill of the hunt, plus that little bit of stress because you know you can’t just walk away, makes a car-sized maze an adventure.  

            Secondly, I love the feeling that comes from being un-lost (and this is my blog so I feel pretty justified in making up my own words). It’s a nice combo of relief and satisfaction of solving the puzzle. Think of the good feeling of solving a difficult math problem, minus the unpleasantness of actually doing math. Not bad, huh?

            Third, it’s a break from routine. One of my friends wrote an excellent paper about the nature of humans to have habits. One of her conclusions—to the best that I can understand it—was that as humans we want the comfort of habit, of continuity, but at the same time we yearn for the unknown, for a new experience. I agree with this, and I think this is especially true as far as places we visit. In my weekly routine I visit certain places, and day in, day out, I go back to those same places. Why? Because I know them. They are comforting to me. Being lost completely breaks that mold. You get to see new sights, experience new things. If you know exactly where you are going—even if it’s somewhere you’ve never been before—that doesn’t necessarily happen. When you’re lost, you are outside of your world, the places you inhabit, and for a second, you are in somebody else’s. When I'm lost, I look at things differently. Someone probably drives on that road every day, and for a minute, I'm in that person's world. That feeling, of breaking out of one’s world and experiencing another's is by far the greatest part of being lost in my book. It don’t think that it’s a coincidence that people enjoying traveling to new places, and yet traveling is the time that one is most likely to get lost. It's new, it's different, it's an adventure, and thus, it's awesome.

            Fourth, well, having a little extra time to belt out the strains of whatever CD is in the player isn’t so bad, is it?