“He who does not really feel himself lost, is lost without remission; that is to say, he never finds himself, never comes up against his own reality.”
― José Ortega y Gasset

I wake up almost every morning with a clear bearing of what I should do. This usually includes making breakfast, waking up my kids, and preparing and taking them to school. Afterward, it’s usually one house chore or another, and then I have 8–10 hours of being productive to the world or trying to be.

When I’m employed, this part is easy. I have a set of objectives to complete and will get paid at the end. When I finish a particular job, I get lost in this emptiness. After my well-deserved break, I feel purposeless, wondering what to do next. Every time I go through this, then completely forget about it when I find myself useful again.

I’m back in one of my purposeless phases, which usually bothers me till I find my next thing. Surprisingly this time, I am at peace with it. I did not expect it to happen. I’m normally pining and searching for the next thing, which seems more important than my current state. But not this time. I am okay with being lost.

I believe everyone feels this way.

Everyone, at some point in their life, doesn’t know what to do with their lives. It can be a terrifying and unpleasant feeling, especially if you insistently looking to get rid of that feeling. And it keeps happening over and over again like hunger because once you eat doesn’t mean you’ll be satisfied forever.

This gnawing feeling will come back again and again, till we die, and I have found beauty and peace in it. It means I’m alive, that there is something inside me still searching for more, searching for life. Some primal instinct, I can’t explain, and it keeps me grounded.

I look at it as hope. I have a reason for living planted deep within me. So I stop looking for a way and let it be. In my uncertainty, I believe somewhere along the way, I will find my thing again. So now I live, bask in my feeling of being lost. Because this still is living.