Lost and Then Found: Overcoming a Long-Held Fear

I hate get­ting lost. The fear of get­ting lost is one of those fears that I have held for as long as I can remem­ber. Maybe it was all those fairy tales I used to read as a child, or over pro­tec­tive par­ents (I’m sure a ther­a­pist would have fun help­ing me sort this one out!) but the fear of get­ting lost is one of the ‘big­gie’ fears for me. At least it was, until this past weekend.…

Hamil­ton Ontario, source: John Piercy, Flickr

There is an exhibit on at the Art Gallery of Hamil­ton (that’s Hamil­ton, Ontario), that I really wanted to see. The ‘Visi­aItalia’ exhibit gath­ered Ital­ian Renais­sance Art from gal­leries across Canada to put on a rather impres­sive dis­play. So my hus­band and I headed down to Burling­ton to pick up my daugh­ter and son-in-law and off to Hamil­ton we went. For­tu­nately my hus­band was dri­ving. We had never dri­ven to the Art Gallery of Hamil­ton before, so to make sure there were no prob­lems get­ting there I brought the GPS (always trust the GPS — well most of the time!!), printed out maps and direc­tions from Mapquest, and had one of those yel­low cov­ered map books, and we still got lost. In fact, we ended up in the east side on Hamil­ton when we wanted to be an the west side of Hamilton.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love Hamil­ton, Ontario. I think it is a great city and would have no prob­lems liv­ing there. Its got some stun­ning attrac­tions — a great water­front, numer­ous water­falls, urban walk­ing trails, great parks, super sports teams (except for an NHL team!!), a cas­tle, a cute down­town area, beau­ti­ful houses, fan­tas­tic malls and shop­ping areas, a Botan­i­cal Gar­den that rivals the best in the world, and a thriv­ing arts and cul­ture scene.

There is one thing about Hamil­ton, how­ever, that sends the chill of fear down my spine every time I think of dri­ving there.

Every time I drive to Hamil­ton I get lost. In fact, every­one I know gets lost dri­ving in or through Hamil­ton. This is a city that both a GPS and Mapquest have dif­fi­cul­ties sort­ing out — in fact it was fol­low­ing Mapquest’s direc­tions that landed us in the wrong side of Hamil­ton (we should have trusted the GPS!!).

Hamil­ton is a city that con­stantly chal­lenges my sense of direc­tion — and gen­er­ally wins. I’m not exactly sure why this hap­pens. Maybe its because Hamil­ton is located south of Lake Ontario, and I’m used to being north of the Lake. This tends to be some­what dis­ori­ent­ing. Or maybe its all those one way streets through­out the down­town and sur­round­ing areas. One wrong turn and you’re lost. Two wrong turns in a row and you are really lost.

What­ever the rea­son, I’ve man­aged to see more of Hamil­ton from deal­ing with being lost than I would have oth­er­wise — and I’ve enjoyed what I’ve seen. Being lost pro­vided us with a very pleas­ant drive through some really pretty parts of Hamil­ton this past week­end. We finally started trust­ing the GPS and, despite the fact that it seemed to be tak­ing us in the wrong direc­tion, it even­tu­ally led us to exactly where we wanted to be.

And that’s when it hit me — being lost isn’t always a bad thing. It’s not some­thing to always be fear­ful of.

As long as you have your Plan B and are pre­pared to trust your sense of direc­tion, or trust your maps, or trust your GPS, or trust that you will ask for direc­tions, then being lost can be a good thing. Being lost gives you a chance to explore and to dis­cover, and that can be exciting.

So, how do you deal with the thought of get­ting lost? Is it one of your fears? Or do you enjoy the chal­lenge and excite­ment of being lost?

TTFN

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