Lost in the Desert

Hey everyone! It’s me and I’m late on the blog this week. Time has and continues to keep slipping away from me nowadays. We’re kind of in that weird state here where 60% of people and businesses are back to their new normal, while the other 40% of people and business are caught in the quarantine purgatory. The 40% is not yet able to work at the office, but other businesses are starting to open, so it feels like life has kind of resumed normally, but behind a Zoom screen still. Anyway, that’s not what I will be posting about this week, but felt the need to explain my lateness to you all J.

Recently I went on a hike with one of my roommates, Julia B. I’ve known Julia for two years now and we have always had meaningful and thought provoking conversations, and recently due to the quarantine, our communication and time together has picked up as a result of having a lot of it to spare. Julia’s and my conversations are usually centered around love, life, challenges, books, beauty, sadness and any other emotion in the novel of life you can think of. Julia tends to push my thinking around vulnerability and I tend to push her thinking around being.

On the most recent hike, which I mentioned in the previous paragraph, Julia voiced to me that she had the desire to and felt the calling to spend some time in the desert. I inquired a little further to find out that metaphorically, she currently feels like she’s lost in the desert. She painted the following picture for me:

Julia- I’m sitting in the desert and not sure which way to go.

Kristen- Is this a temporary destination or a permanent one?

Julia- Temporary, for sure.

Kristen- What are you looking for? There’s a lot of vastness in the desert.

Julia- I think I’m looking for the oasis.

Kristen- What do you want to do there?

Julia- Be and drink the water, but only temporarily.

Kristen- Okay, and then what? What do you do once that objective has been accomplished?

Julia- Then, I keep looking for civilization.

Kristen- Okay, what are you hoping civilization brings to you?

Julia- Belonging and purpose.

I appreciated Julia’s description of being lost in the desert, as I too have been there a few times in my life. I think it’s safe to say we’ve all intentionally or unintentionally flirted with the vastness of the desert before (moving, ending a relationship, starting a new job, grieving a death, having a child, not knowing what’s next for us, etc.). I think that it’s so easy to want to fix and fast forward through these uncomfortable and uncertain situations, as we so badly long to find out what’s next and when the uncertainty is going to end. We want to jump to our next destination to avoid the realness and rawness of our current one, and we think that reaching our next destination will make us feel validated, safe and purposeful; we think we will feel better if x thing ends.

I’m here to tell you all that reaching civilization will not bring you belonging and purpose. We do not grow as humans, nor become the best versions of ourselves by fast forwarding to where we’re going. It’s the shit we experience along the way that molds and shapes us into who we want and are meant to be. It's in the heartache, death, sadness, despair, lostness and stillness that we find meaning and connection. Perhaps finding civilization is not where we find our belonging and purpose, but rather where we use and share the belonging and purpose we found on our way there.