Mindfully lost and found
Updated: Sep 21, 2020

In the midst of what feels a little like Armageddon, I find myself feeling intermittently lost and found: what was once relatively stable ground has been pulled away like a rug from beneath my feet and I feel sucked into a vortex of swirling confusion – it’s quite a nauseous kind of a feeling. It’s also quite dark here and sometimes rather hard to see.
As I walk to the chemist’s, the broad smile of a fellow human – a stranger – illuminates my way as they kindly cross the road to enable a ‘social’ distancing. I am found.
In the supermarket, I feel my heart pounding in my chest as someone comes close and then reaches in front of me to grasp for a product. I swerve my trolley and hold my breath. I am lost.
As I take my daily exercise, birds hop a foot or two away from my head in the hedgerows along the country roads, quite unphased by my passing. Deer graze openly in fields at the side of the road. I am found.
I read the news and discover yet another healthcare worker has died – this time a pregnant nurse. I am lost.
On a Thursday evening at 8pm I leave the fortress of my home – just a few feet – to stand outside with other family members to bang pans with wooden spoons. The clattering and clapping that fills our street brings a tender lightness to my chest and a surge of gratitude. I am found.
As I sit here writing this, with the sun shining outside my window and a masked gentleman walking past the house with his shopping, I feel both lost and found. I feel that I am resting like a fool in the midst of it all – the stillness and the storm. It feels like being aware of a deep unsettledness and at the same time being OK with it.
However your life is unfolding right now, I hope very much that your moments of feeling found are at least equal to – if not more than – your moments of feeling lost.
With so much love in these very strange times,
