I was lost a long time, without knowing it. Without the Faith, one is free, and that is a pleasant feeling at first. There are no questions of conscience, no constraints, except the constraints of custom, convention and the law, and these are flexible enough for most purposes. It is only later that terror comes. One is free - but free in chaos, in an unexplained and unexplainable world. One is free in a desert, from which there is no retreat but inward, toward the hollow core of oneself. There is nothing to build on but the small rock of one's own pride, and this is a nothing, based on nothing... I think, therefore I am. But what am I? An accident of disorder, going no place.

Cutting Loose”

Sometimes from sorrow, for no reason,
you sing. For no reason, you accept
the way of being lost, cutting loose
from all else and electing a world
where you go where you want to.

Arbitrary, a sound comes, a reminder
that a steady center is holding
all else. If you listen, that sound
will tell where it is, and you
can slide your way past trouble.

Certain twisted monsters
always bar the path – but that’s when
you get going best, glad to be lost,
learning how real it is
here on the earth, again and again.

You exist if and only if you are free to do things without a visible objective, with no justification and, above all, outside the dictatorship of someone else’s narrative.

And the way to be free is to let go of anything that is not within your control.

Freedom may come not from being in control of life but rather from a willingness to move with the events of life, to hold on to our memories but let go of the past, to choose, when necessary, the inevitable. We can become free at any time.

Freedom from the known is death, and then you are living.

I am free and that is why I am lost.

Ah, monsieur, to live in the bosom of the sea! Only there can independence be found! There I recognize no master! There I am free!

Life takes us by surprise and orders us to move toward the unknown -even when we don't want to and when we think we don't need to.

Life is about not knowing and then doing something anyway.

Having chosen this foolishness, I was a free being. How could the world ever stop me, how could I betray myself, if I was not afraid?

You are only free when you realize you belong no place — you belong every place — no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great.

If you are free, you are not predicatable and you are not controllable.

We have fallen out of belonging. Consequently, when we stand before crucial thresholds in our lives, we have no rituals to protect, encourage, and guide us as we cross over into the unknown.