Fostering My Poor Sense of Direction
Not quite 24 hours into our adventure here in Barcelona, I headed out to walk the dog before anyone else was stirring. I took the route Steve and I had pioneered the day before in our initial explorations. All went well until it came time for the close. I turned onto what I was pretty sure was our street. But, our apartment building wasn’t there. I kept walking and tried to make a course correction at the first opportunity. It was immediately clear that I was in entirely unchartered territory. I course corrected again—as much as one can course correct when one is quite clueless as to the correct course to pursue. Mostly, I walked, beating a relentless, circuitous path back to my own front door. After two miles of loops and turns, I finally stumbled upon the apartment from an angle I could recognize. On later explorations, I learned that I had passed it three different times, but never realized it because I thought it should be on the other side of the street.
This experience is pretty typical for me. I am prodigious in my ability to get lost. My whole life, I’ve considered my poor sense of direction to be a personality flaw. Until, one day, I didn’t anymore.
I was walking through a stretch of woods I’d explored several times before and I realized that I had absolutely no idea what was around the next corner. This fact was thrilling to me. My innate ability to lose my way extends my window of wonder and awe. It prolongs the time in which I’m primed for discovery and surprise. It turns out that my poor sense of direction is a super power. So, these days, I’m actively fostering it.
General Principles of Fostering a Poor Sense of Direction
Release control and be deeply open to whatever is right in front of you.
Get caught up in the details.
Become more comfortable with being lost—on both a theoretical and practical level.
Don’t pull out a map every time you don’t know where you are. Give in to the power of wandering.
Be guided by a vague idea about the general direction to follow instead of an exact set of instructions.
Recognize that that general sense of where to go is very likely inaccurate, but trust that it will bring you somewhere interesting.
Don’t work too hard at placing everything in context.
Daydream as you walk. Instead of checking every street sign, I imagine who got married in that church, what store front I could create right there, or the stories of people who I pass.
Focus on movable landmarks instead of the fixed ones you might run into again. It’s far better to pay attention to the guy hanging up a sign or the spot where the kids were playing in the woods than it is to notice street corners and buildings.
Try to resist the urge to look for the familiar and focus, instead, on the unfamiliar. There is always something new to be discovered, even on a path I’ve walked a hundred times.
Let go of the idea that the most direct route is the best route.
Switch the purpose of the outing from “arriving at any one place” to “having a good wander”. This way, success is measured in wrong turns and retraced footsteps instead of destinations.
Best Practices in Fostering a Poor Sense of Direction
Expand My Circle of the Unknown in Stages
If I’m in a new country, where I don’t speak the language, don’t know how to use the public transit and don’t know the address of my accommodations, I am not very comforted by my poor sense of direction. But, if I can change even just one of those variables, I can embrace my natural penchant for getting lost and open myself up to what it will allow me to discover.
Be Responsible for Only Me
I have quite a high tolerance for being lost, having spent many a happy hour in such a state. But, I know not everyone does. So, when I’m responsible for getting other people where we’re intending to go, it’s far more difficult to relish my inability to follow directions. I find that fostering a poor sense of direction is best accomplished as a solo pursuit, or in the company of a very select few who can share my appreciation for not knowing where I am.
Practice When There are No Deadlines
I spend lots of time wandering without a timetable. Usually this wandering is human-powered: walking or biking. In such circumstances, there’s no need to hurry or arrive at any location on a particular schedule. This kind of practiced wandering allows me to get comfortable with disengaging with directions and simply allowing a path to unfold. But, it’s all a great deal easier to appreciate when I have plenty of time to wander and have no schedule to keep.