I stopped @ the gas station this morning. Just me and Avery. She was in need of chocolate... far be if from me to interfere with a girl and her need for chocolate. So,I'm holding my 3 Musketeers and Diet Coke at the counter and in walks a guy who is visably flustered and announces he is lost.
"How did I get here? I was coming from Cloumiana and I turned next to (names some random vet office) and somehow I ended up here! What did I do wrong?"
Me and the guy behind the counter look at him dumbfounded. I start to ask for more specifics about his journey... turns, street numbers... and I pause. All I can think is who cares? Who cares how you got lost. We are having a conversation about how you got lost, not how to find your way from here. It's stupid. It's pointless. Right now dude, you are lost and I can't pick apart how you got here and even if I could what purpose would that serve? What do you want to do now? Stand in a gas station while my Diet Coke gets cold and hash out your wrong turns? Or let me help you find your way from here? Guy behind the counter... We can call him Captain Obvious from this point forward.... says
Real slow and overpronounced, like he's trying to slow him down with words or talking to someone with a hearing deficiency. I find this more than a little bit funny.
"Where are you trying to go?"
At this question lost guy again launches into all the turns he took and random landmarks he passed and asks "What did I do wrong?"
Dude. You're killing me. Or maybe, I dislike this conversation because it is way deeper than a moment with a random stranger and Captian Obvious is right. How much time have I spent picking over things that cannot be undone? I can't help how you got lost. You are. Maybe there is some merit to reviewing the steps... for the sake of posterity or so that you won't repeat those wrong turns but all I cound think for lost guy is I can tell you how to go where you need to go from here, but I'm not wasting 3 Musketeers day on sorting out your lostness. I can get you un-lost in 5 minutes or you and Captian Obvious can spent the next 20 minutes pouring over pointless backtracking. I hate backtracking. So, I left. But it was one of those moments that sticks on you like the yuck that gets left after you pull off a piece of tape. It stays sticky in the spot where the tape was and all kinds of fuzz and funk still hangs there. I have spent days picking over the ways I am lost guy. I am reading John Adams by David McCoullough and I have driven my best friend crazy with random political quotes from great Americans. They were so awesome. So real. And they did big, cool things...like founding the United States of America, which worked out well for me.... but anyway last night I am reading and after a personal betrayal by a friend Adams wrote in a letter "A man who is injured loves to talk of his wounds." Im sure Adams did not have me in mind when he wrote those words but that is the beauty of great writing, it is a collection of words from another time, place and person, but you find an element of your self hidden amongst the collection of vowels and consonants. (See... amongst... the use of that word shows the effect of spending days lost in the 1800's.) But it's true. I found lost gas station guy. Modern day translation "A man who is lost loves to talk about how he got there." I'm exhausted of lost. I'm exhausted of wounds. I don't corner the market on getting lost, making mistakes, enduring pain, or even rolling around in it. But I refuse to be the person who can't find her way because she is stuck trying to figure out how she got that way. Why pick over that mess when you are holding a 3 musketeers? What problem in life cannot be solved with a 180 degree turn and chocolate with a nougaty center? I open my blog with this random reflection because it is me @ this moment. And I... like John Adams advised his son... "live life in a constant state of reflection."
