The Difference Between Wandering and Being Lost
My mind wanders constantly while my body sits in an Article chair at work, staring at a gigantic screen while sunlight pours through my front windows. Cars pass. People yammer. Lights go red, then green. Everybody is on some path.
Trees by the roadside. A ditch in a desert. A wrong turn. Catastrophic news. Love. Loss. Grief. I wander through them all with two bottles of iced tea in a gray backpack I got on Amazon. Rain falls. I walk.
I feel lost when I don’t know myself, not when I go down the wrong street. I moved to North Hollywood before eighth grade and was charged with walking to and from school if my stepdad couldn’t pick me up. They showed me the way. It was only a couple of turns. That first day, and several days after, as I traversed the hot pavement of California streets, I second-guessed my route because it was taking so long. I wasn’t lost. I just hadn’t found my way home yet.
Dogs barking and frothing. Cars whizzing on four-lane streets. A boy in his new town, recalculating his whereabouts. A pattern forms. A path worn invisibly over the concrete sidewalks to home. Houses as landmarks. Waymarkers of a boy alone.
I used to drive from my dad’s house in Mount Kisco to see my best friends in Katonah. The route was always the same, but I went the wrong way so many times. Saw Mill Parkway North. Saw Mill Parkway South. What is North and South when you are sixteen?
When I moved back to New York, after thirty years away, I continually took the train the wrong way. How do I know if Brooklyn or Queens is downtown or uptown? Why was I so geographically challenged? Some days I was more lost than wandering. Until I wasn’t. Like my dad always told me, you can always turn around.
I wander because I am always in search of something. That won’t stop. I can never find everything. I have what I need. What I am searching for is ongoing. A cloud slowly moving through the left side of a tall tree. A candy wrapper to remind me of my childhood. The smell of sap. The taste of one bead of sweat falling into my mouth.
I can’t lose the path I am creating by walking aimlessly.
© Jonathan Greene, July 27, 2026
