We are born into corridors,
measured, labeled,
painted neutral,
walls rising before we learn how wide
our thoughts can stretch.
Lines are drawn early:
This is far enough,
this is acceptable,
this is where you stop.
We are told our ideas must sit quietly,
folded into boxes like unused maps,
that imagination is dangerous if it wanders,
that questions should behave
and answers should already be known.
Life, they say, is safest when it stays
inside the margins.
But something restless stirs
beneath the rules.
A pulse.
A whisper that refuses to be contained.
It asks why when certainty is demanded.
It presses against the walls
until the walls begin to feel like cages.
So, we step away,
not boldly at first,
just enough to feel the ground shift.
We lose the familiar landmarks:
approval, certainty, direction.
The path dissolves behind us,
and fear walks close,
breathing doubt into our ears.
Getting lost is not pleasant.
It is scary.
It is standing in the middle
of your own life
without a signpost,
realizing the rules you followed
never taught you how to listen
to yourself.
Yet in the wandering,
something opens.
The mind stretches its limbs.
The soul exhales.
We begin to explore rooms
within us
long kept locked,
old grief, unspoken dreams,
questions postponed for survival.
We ask what was,
not to relive it,
but to understand it.
We ask what will be,
not to control it
but to meet it honestly.
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Lost, we learn the sound of our own voice
without the echo of expectation.
Lost, we discover courage
that shows up when there is
no map.
Lost, we uncover truths
that could never survive inside permission.
And slowly, almost unnoticed,
something aligns.
The fragments gather.
The wandering becomes a way of knowing.
We recognize ourselves
not as who we were told to be,
but as who we have always been
beneath the boundaries.
It is only by leaving the walls
that we understand their shape.
Only by losing the path
that we learn how to choose one.
Only by becoming lost
that we are finally,
fully,
found.
Michele Luckenbaugh is a patient advocate.
