From the earliest age, we love and fear being lost. Peek-a-boo, blind man’s bluff, hide and seek—all delicious little moments of panic and relief.
For adults, being lost loses appeal—at least for those of us without a sense of direction. Travel writer Matt Gross evidently has such a fine-tuned internal GPS that he requires all the resources the New York Times can spare in his new quest to lose himself somewhere in the world. Gross complains that he’s unable to get lost in the labyrinth of Tangier’s medina. I, on the other hand, have gotten lost on Chicago’s North Halsted, a street as straight as a survey laser. (If it’s a rainy night and you can’t see the Sears* Tower, you can go north instead of south for miles and it all looks the same!)
“How does it feel truly not to know where you are?” Gross asks, claiming not to have been seriously lost since he was a tot. “Every detail, from the angle of the sun to the direction of the wind, contributes to a mental map that your brain builds subconsciously. It’s like learning to read: Once you know how, you can’t not do it.”
The catch is, if you never had it, you ain’t got it. I used to wonder why about the half the time, when I exit the ladies’ room in a strange place, I turn in the wrong direction. Finally it dawned on me that it’s probably because no matter how I got in there, when I leave I turn to the right. And yes, probably about half the time, that’s wrong.
If being lost is bad, losing something is worse. Over your lifetime, how many things have you lost, and which do you still lament? If you can remember it, you probably still regret it. I know I do: a baby ring from my grandfather, a quartz rock that looked like a diamond, a baseball glove broken in over twenty years, a before-and-after videotape of a rehabbed apartment, an untyped thesis in a suitcase, stolen. And all of it trivial compared to the loss of people I have loved. But from the trivial to the profound, there’s nothing darker than the grief we feel in loss.
If you’re like me, a too common cause of regret and frustration is losing work that’s already done: we leave a briefcase on the train; our laptop crashes; we save an old version in place of the new one. The effects can range from minor inconvenience to costly disaster. We suffer pain from the loss, anger at our own carelessness or bad luck, grief at having to do the work again.
So in the interests of productivity and emotional health, let’s remember to practice the easiest kinds of loss prevention: Make a copy. Stay alert. And back up, back up, back up.
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*Anyone over the age of five gets to call it that.
I once watered a plant hanging over my laptop and watered the mother board! A friend recovered my files, but half of a short story was missing. I mourned and moved on. Last week, while cleaning up computer files, I found the finished version of that story on a memory stick. Wahoo! Bless the gods of backing up.
Posted by: Karen Douglass | 09/13/2010 at 08:40 AM
I cannot forget the loss of a silver ring that belonged to my grandfather. It was made from some coin that was like a dime, but it wasn't FDR's face. The face had been pushed out so it was more three dimensional. I lost it (or my roommate stole it) at Girls State. about 15 years ago.
Posted by: Erin | 09/13/2010 at 09:11 AM
Ahh, immediately my copy of Isaac Bashevis Singer's Stories for Children comes to mind. A gift from my parents, at my third (perhaps fourth or fifth) birthday, I sent it to myself at college in an overpacked box of books. The box arrived half-empty, and I don't even know what else I lost, but I still have a fantasy of a postman showing up some day with a ziploc bag, saying, "I believe this is yours."
Posted by: Dingbat | 09/13/2010 at 09:48 AM
Not entirely surprising that you make a habitual right when leaving a doorway: It's a very left-brain (logical) direction. :)
Posted by: Don Chinnici | 09/13/2010 at 10:36 AM
This makes me think of Elizabeth Bishop's wonderful poem "One Art" -- "The art of losing isn't hard to master.."
Posted by: Susan Fine | 09/13/2010 at 01:27 PM
Referring to North Halsted as a street as straight as a survey laser is an unfortunate metaphor. North Halsted is the main street of Boystown, and to characterize it as straight may be good cartography but it's bad demography.
Posted by: Larry K | 09/13/2010 at 02:09 PM
Lovely piece, meandering with purpose. Thanks.
Posted by: George Ernsberger | 09/13/2010 at 11:35 PM