stay lost as long as you can
…for everyone that´s feeling a bit lost in life.
I think for the longest time, my goal was to find myself, to figure out who I am and what my purpose in life is. But somewhere along the way, in this very overwhelming and stressful process, I started to like not knowing.
Why should I figure out exactly who I am? It feels like it would only take away from my freedom.
For years, I tried to figure out who I am. But over the course of the last year, I started changing the goal. Instead of trying to figure out who I am, I want to meet as many versions of myself as possible.
I think knowing exactly who I am would only limit me.
There are so many sides of me that I haven’t met yet.
For example, if I had followed the path my family wanted me to follow, I would probably be a teacher now. And I would have never found out how much I love traveling the world on my own.
Before I did it, I thought it was something I could never do. I wasn’t the type of person for it. It was going to be nothing more than a dream of mine. Maybe in another life, I could go out into the world. In this life, I was too quiet and too introverted.
Turns out, I’m only too quiet around people I don’t feel comfortable around.
If I had stayed in my hometown and gone to university right after graduating from high school, I would have never gone to Mexico, Ireland or India on my own. Those places deeply shaped me, and revealed sides of myself I would have never met otherwise.
And that’s what I mean.
What if knowing who I am actually makes me too comfortable?
I know I wouldn’t want to reach a point where I stop growing because I’ve decided I already know who I am. What if the person I’m supposed to become is completely different from who I always thought I was?
The person I am today is a reflection of the people around me and the experiences I’ve had. But if I change the experiences, maybe even a few of the people around me, wouldn’t that reveal a new version of myself?
Maybe it’s a version I like, maybe it’s one I don’t. Either way, I think it’s a good thing to meet new versions of myself.
I’m going to stay lost and find beauty in it.
This used to stress me out, now I think it’s actually a pretty great chance.
I have no idea what I’m doing with my life, and that’s okay. It’s great, to be honest. I also know I’d be so bored if I had my entire life path laid out in front of me, even though that’s what society wants us to do. To know what we want, to grow up as quickly as possible. Go to university, get a good, socially accepted job, get married, have kids, buy a house in the suburbs.
I found peace in not knowing. I don’t have to have it all figured out. Life can’t be planned anyway.
Instead of trying to figure out who I am, I want to do my best to be present. To be content with what I have right now instead of constantly thinking about the future and making plans for it.
I’m a lot happier when I let it all go. Being lost is a beautiful thing, I don’t have to have it figured out. How boring would that be?
I don’t know if my point came across, I feel like this was a bit messy.
But I think that’s what changed for me. Seeing being lost as a chance instead of a burden took away so much of the pressure I felt from society to have a life plan and know exactly what I want from life.
When I’m lost, I don’t settle into one version of myself and decide that this is simply who I am. Things like “I can’t do that, it doesn’t fit me” won´t be said. Because I can do whatever the fuck I want. I can reinvent myself. Try something. Make mistakes. Try again. Change my mind. Become someone I didn’t expect to become.
There is no settled version of me out there.
Maybe there will never be a “final version” of me. (I hope not!)
There are so many versions of myself I’ve never met, and there will be so many moments when I surprise myself. I hope I get to say “I didn’t even know I could do that” a thousand more times in my life, the way I’ve already said it a thousand times.
Maybe I’ll go out and try something completely new today.
— ☾ —
Update: I didn’t try something completely new that day. But I went to Ecstatic Dance for the first time in a very long time and remembered how much I loved it.
And I thought about how, when I was a teenager, I always wanted to be able to dance freely — not just in my room, but in public. I thought I could never do that because people would think I was weird. Today, I don’t give a fuck, and I´m proud of that.
Little disclaimer:
I wrote this in September 2025, based on a journal entry I wrote in August 2024. A lot has changed since then, as things tend to do within a year.
For the first time in my life, I’ve found a glimpse of what I’d like my future to look like. But I don’t ever want to settle, I want to keep trying new things and potentially meet versions of myself I never thought would exist.
I still chose to publish this because this shift in mindset really helped me stop feeling so lost, or like I was behind in life while everyone around me seemed to have everything figured out. And I know I’m not the only one who has felt that way.