Mindfully lost and found

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,