May 4, 2018 • 29 mins
We all feel lost at some point in our lives. Why is it such a universal experience, and how do we deal with it? This week, we try to embrace being lost. Special guest: Victoria Price.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
At some point we all feel lost. Part of that
might be because there's so many different ways that someone
can be lost. Maybe it's when you can't decide on
a career, or when you're feeling lonely. Maybe you're truly
in the middle of nowhere without a sense of direction.
And there's a fascination with getting lost and the freedom
of being lost that permeates so much of film and literature.
(00:25):
We're so proud, Rudd, what are you going to do now? Upstairs?
For a minute? I mean with your future? You're lying. Well,
that's a little hard to say. And when I think
of being lost, I think of Ernest Hemingway. He was
even part of the Lost narration of authors, along with F.
(00:45):
Scott mitch Gerald and Gertrude Stein. They wrote about characters
who seem to be aimlessly wandering through life without any
true cause or purpose, and yet these characters are still
adored today. Hemingway Son Also Rises is a book that
I could read over and over again. When I first
read it, I was very young, and I told my
(01:07):
parents I was going to be an expatriate like Jake
Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley. I would travel the world
and my life would be filled with art and culture
and passion. But the older I got and the more
I analyzed the characters, I realized they're actually all pretty
lost in life and have no real drive. Even at
(01:28):
the end of the book, the characters seemed to be
right back where they started. As an adult, the idea
of wandering through life would sadden me, but I swooned
at the idea when I read it in the pages
of my favorite Hemingway book. Why are we so enchanted
by the idea of being a wanderer but are still
uncomfortable with it in our real lives? That's what we're
(01:50):
covering on this week's episode, Getting Lost, Feeling Lost and
listening to answers to the question when in your life
have you felt lost? M h M. Welcome to the
Question Booth. I'm Dylan Fagin and I'm Kathleen William and
(02:12):
we're glad you're here to get lost with us and
the Question Booth. We ask people a big question each
week and find a pattern in their answers, and this
week's pattern was people believing that being lost isn't always
a bad thing. People felt we needed to be okay
with being uncomfortable sometimes and not dwell on what we
think we should be doing with our lives. And we'll
(02:32):
also be talking to Victoria Price. She's even written a
book that's a real meditation on being lost and embracing it.
And speaking of literature, let's start this week's episode with Hunter.
I think it's kind of human nature to get lost
from time to time, and it kind of find your
way back. And that's the fun of life. You know,
(02:53):
A good story doesn't involve some money knowing exactly what
they're supposed to be doing the whole time. Like the
best characters are just like wandering, you know. And I
mean that's the thing, is like what is finding yourself?
I think we're all just kind of works in progress.
I think when we feel lost sometimes we feel like
we're the only ones who's lost. Because that was something
like when I was leaving Georgia Southern. Just to note,
(03:14):
Georgia Southern is a school about three hours southeast of Atlanta.
A lot of the people that I was friends with
down there, like seemed like they knew what they were doing.
They seemed like they knew their major for sure. They
seemed like they had it figured out and like maybe
they weren't doing as well in classes as maybe they
seemed like they were sure that's what they should have
been doing. But once I got back here and like
figured out what I was doing, I figured out that
(03:36):
like you can know and still be lost, you know
what I mean, And everybody's just kind of faking it
because everybody's scared to admit that they're lost. I think.
But like when you find somebody that you can relate to,
especially like in literature, but in life too, you know,
you find somebody else who's willing to like share that
they're lost with you, that's kind of important. It's human nature.
And I think, especially when we're in school, you just
(03:56):
look around and you like that person has it all together,
and it's like usually they don't. I was about to say,
I think that that's just something that like is on
TV shows and movies and like the person figures it
all out and they've got it all together. I don't
think anyway has it all together, you know. I think
at different parts of your life you have certain stuff together,
and you have some stuff that you're like, you know,
I don't have any idea which way is up and
(04:17):
which ways down. I think that's important to kind of
think about when you're lost. There's a quote that's all
over here in Atlanta, and I'm for drawing a blank
on who it is right now, but that not all
who wander are lost. I like that, you know what
I mean. I think sometimes that's what life's about, is
wandering around and not knowing. Then you know, you find
more of who you are, more of what you're looking
(04:39):
for than you even realized. I think we're all lost.
It's understandable that when you're in your twenties or you're
just graduating from college, that you might feel adrift. It
could be the first time that you're on your own too.
You can have job experience or a degree, but a
lot of folks are older than you will still call
you a kid. Maybe you're proud of your resume and
you've worked really hard, but jobs are telling you that
(04:59):
you just don't have the experience. Yeah, this can really
leave you feeling lost, and some studies suggest that this
can lead to a lot of pain and depression. Young
people are suffering more from depression than previous generations, and
the onset of depression has dropped from our forties and
fifties to our twenties. So yes, the pressure and stress
(05:20):
of starting your life as your own person is one
time you can feel profoundly lost, and we heard a
lot of that in the booth this week. Here's Lily.
I mean, honestly, I think that I'm in a position
right now where I'm in transition from one thing to another,
and I think that those are the times in my
life that I've tried to feel lost. I don't know,
I feel like I'm in one right now, but I
(05:40):
wouldn't say I'm lost. I would say I'm on the
way to something different that I haven't done before. Sometimes
it is nice when you are forced to be uncomfortable
or change is usually when you have the most growth
within yourself. You just have to be open to that,
to being uncomfortable. I think a lot of us struggle
with that. Yeah, I used to struggle with it a
(06:00):
lot when I first went to school, you know, when
I was like eighteen, I got out on my own
and I was like, this is uncomfortable. I don't like it.
I don't want any part of it. I don't know
what I'm doing and that makes me feel bad. And
I've learned over the years the uncomfortable and then not
knowing what to do isn't bad, and you have to
take it and keep moving forward and keep your eyes
(06:22):
on what you want or the things that you enjoy doing,
are the things that you're passionate about, and make those
the priority instead of thinking like this feels weird, you know,
and like I know so many people who have gotten
on a pathway and then found something else that they
liked better and just transitioned into that, not knowing that
that was what was going to happen to them at all.
(06:43):
Like that wasn't anywhere in the plan. So it doesn't
mean that you're wrong or that you messed up. It
just means that, like life happened, and you adjust. I
just thought of a great metaphor um. One of my
friends is a terrible, terrible driver. She's awful with directions.
(07:06):
She'll go and pull you know, six U turns in
one trip to somewhere twenty minutes away that we've been
to once a week for the past year. And then
there's also I see the people on the road that
are like, no, I'm gonna make this left turn across
this five lane highway that's full of people and SUVs
and semi trucks and I'm gonna make it happen because
I need to turn left. And like, I think one
(07:28):
time I was talking with somebody and they did the
same thing where like we missed it and she's like, oh,
I'm so sorry, we're gonna have to pull you turn,
and I was like, it's fine, I'll go up around.
I'll make it happen. It doesn't matter. But I think
it's the same thing with feeling lost. It's like, don't
be afraid to do something and then make the U turn,
come back to where you started and try again. There's
no harm in like backing out of something because you
(07:51):
didn't think it was gonna work out, or you thought
it was something different, and then you ended up not
being as into it as you thought. So try again,
you turn. That was Lily in the Question booth. We'll
be right back to hear more about being lost. Mm
(08:29):
hmmmm hm, and we're back. Thanks for joining us. And
as we're hearing from people in the booth and talking
about being lost and all its different meanings. This week,
we really want to emphasize how many young people came
into the booth and talked about feeling lost. I don't
feel like I don't know what I'm gonna do. You know,
I feel like I felt lost, like all throughout school constantly.
(08:52):
It's not, you know, uncommon for me to just pick
up and move. My sense of loss is like studying
for something I never wanted to be that would probably
to be this week for me. Honestly, um, I might
start crying whoa every day of my life. Maybe a
few months ago. I definitely felt very lost when I graduated.
I was texting my dad and I was like, I
(09:13):
feel so lost. So we've heard from young people about
how they currently feel lost, but the feeling is often
temporary and it's not always easy to see that in
the moment, but working through it can leave us with
a profound sense of clarity. It can be a pivotal
moment in your life. Here's Robert talking about one of
(09:33):
those experiences and this story. It sounds a lot like
a movie. I think from me as I've gotten in
my older years, I found myself again. But I can
think back to like a point in my life where
I think things changed for me, and it's meeting that
person where you didn't expect something to happen and like
(09:54):
a miracle takes you know, part And for me, it
was probably when I was seventeen years old and I
I grew up in New Jersey and I was in
let's just say the rougher part of New Jersey, and
my dad was, you know, not working, he was disabled,
he was you know, other issues there. He was an alcoholic.
And my mom and I you know, argued a lot
(10:16):
about my dad and kind of kicking him out of
the house or so I got to that point where
it was like him or me kind of thing. And
I had moved out of my house while I was
in high school, and uh, it was a tough period
for me, like in terms of thinking who I was
as a person, still trying to find myself. I wasn't
even going to school. I mean, it was a tough
period in my life. So I was very lost at
(10:39):
that point. And the interesting part of the story that
affects me personally because it's like one of those moments
where if that didn't happen, and I don't know where
i'd beat today. But one day I remember walking by
this park and some guys, random guys came out of
a liquor store they're older than me, and they had
a couple of six packs of beer and they jump
(11:00):
done this pickup truck and I saw one familiar face
and that familiar face was a short order cook that
worked next to the drug store where I worked in
this town of Nork. And he's like, hey, Bob, you know,
hop on. So I hopped on the back of this
truck and we went just like around the corner to
somebody else's apartment. And the strange part that works from
(11:23):
there is everybody went to this apartment and into this driveway,
and the short order cook guy like grabbed me by
the shoulder and he took me aside, and we stood
across the street by the park. So I'm looking at
across the street at all these other people with the
beer and everything it's happening, and the guy that's with
me is just some random stranger that I've never met
before other than you know, he would cook my meal,
(11:44):
you know, for a breakfast or lunch. And he took
me aside, and then he proceeded to tell me what
was going to happen next. He was like, a car
is gonna pull up, Like another car pulled up. He's
like there's gonna be an altercation, and there was an altercation.
You know, He's like some he's gonna pull out a
baseball bat. And it did mesmerize me, and the fact
that he was like basically for telling what was going
(12:05):
to happen. And then he's like, we need to run.
He's like, there's gonna be gun shots. Run into the park.
So we do that, and of course there are gunshots,
like I can hear them. And I run with this
guy and my adrenaline is pumping and we get further
into the park and he uh proceeded to tell me
and talk about my family, and and I asked him
questions too, like I'm like, who are you? Like, you're
(12:26):
just the guy that works behind the counter. Like he's like, no, Bob,
because he goes, I came here for a particular reason.
I came here to help people, and that's why I'm
in this position at him. And it was almost kind
of like a heaven on Earth kind of thing. It
was very surreal for me, and that he proceeded to
tell me about my family. He pretty much at the
end said, you know, I know you don't like your
(12:47):
dad and you moved out of your house. But he's like,
I see your mother, and your mother is crying, and
he goes, I see her sister and she's crying. You
need to go home to them because they need you.
And when he said that, literally, I ran back home.
Like it was like four miles from my house and
I and I went home and never really looked back.
(13:08):
And years later I asked my mom. I was like,
this guy had to know, like maybe my mom told
him like, hey, you need to intervene. She had no
idea who this guy was. His name was Alex, have
no idea what his last name was. The crazy part
is I always tell people like, guess what the name
of the diner was where he worked. It was called Heaven.
That was the name of the That was the name
(13:28):
of the dinery. We're done. So for me, that was
a time when I was lost and I found myself
again because I had not applied to any colleges and
I wasn't even thinking of college at that time because uh,
you know, before that situation was just so miserable and
like things kind of fell into place after that for me,
a guy from shell Oil on a very well to
do town kind of plucked me out and gave me
(13:50):
a scholarship, a four year scholarship to uh Engineering School.
But like when you go back to being lost, that
was the lowest of lows in my life. And maybe
that's what I needed, like somebody to pick me up
and carry me across the finish line. Now that we've
(14:13):
heard about being lost, let's hear about embracing it. We'll
be right back with an interview with Victoria Price. M hm,
(14:40):
and we're back. And recently we had the opportunity to
talk with Victoria Price. She's an author and designer. She
recently wrote a book called The Way of Being Lost.
She's also the daughter of Vincent Price, which we mentioned
because the way she lives and travels now is so
different from the life she knew growing up. Let's let
Victoria splain well. I grew up in a family that
(15:02):
valued accumulation, and I grew up in a family that
in a way embodied the American ideals. I grew up
in a nine thousand square foot house with a family
who drove a Rolls Royce, a dad who was an iconic,
world famous movie star, and our house was My mother
(15:23):
was a designer, so our house was constantly photographed and
it was in architectural digest or house and garden and
and so it was really this lifestyle that was very
much about, uh, the things that surrounded you, bolstering this
idea that life is about accumulation and possession and identity
(15:45):
and all of those things. And when you're a kid,
you just sort of take that in you think, oh whatever,
But as you get older, you realize there's a value
placed on those things. And from the time I was young,
I found myself wanting to pull away from that, but
not really understanding what it meant. So when I was
in my early twenties, I lived in the mountains to
(16:05):
the east of Albuquerque, New Mexico, in a log cabin
with no running water and no heat, and we squatted
and we dug our own out houses, and I would
go out with a chainsaw that had been stolen from
the US Force Service, not by me, and uh and
go out and cut my own firewood. And I did
that for two years, and I just had this urge
(16:27):
to feel what it would be like to not be
surrounded by fame and fortune and all of that stuff.
But eventually, of course, I got called back into that world,
and I feel like my whole life has kind of
been this this push pull, this ebb and flow between
the world that I grew up in, which is the
world that we're all taught to aspire to in a way,
(16:48):
this world of having and being and an identity, and
then this feeling that I never felt like myself in
that world. Fully, it's it's tantalizing, it's appealing. It you
feel good when you have the stuff and you but
I never really felt like myself. And I realized that,
like one of the best days of my life I
(17:08):
can remember was I didn't have anyone to go chop
the wood with, and I drove, you know, two and
a half hours out with my dog by myself with
the chainsaw, and I chopped all the wood and I
halt put loaded it all up into the pickup and
I drove it back. And I remember feeling like nobody
ever taught me I could be this self sufficient. So
that was in my twenties, but it gave me the
(17:30):
feeling that I could survive anywhere. But by the end
of my forties, I was really in this place where
again this push pull, like I kept my life had
kept falling apart, and I never really understood why, and
then I kept rebuilding it back to be what I
thought it was supposed to be, and then it would
get back to where it was supposed to be, and
I thought, I don't really like this. And at the
end of my forties, I had this kind of conversation
(17:52):
with myself in the mirror, and I thought, Wow, you're
doing everything right, and you keep doing everything right, and
you're miserable. And I vowed that I would change my life,
but I had no idea how. And what finally I
came to realize was I had to be willing to
lose everybody else's idea of who I should be. I
had to be willing to lose all the old stories
(18:12):
that had attached themselves to me. I had to be
willing to lose the world's idea of what we're supposed
to do, what we should do. And so the last
seven years have been this path of being willing to
get lost. And the funny thing is, so I'm at
the end of I believe in seven year cycles, and
I'm at the end of the seven years, and people
(18:35):
keep saying, how do you feel? And honestly, I think
I thought I would feel like, Oh, I know what
I'm supposed to do. I do know what I'm supposed
to do, but not in the way I thought. Because
when people say how do you feel, I say, I
feel lost, But this time it's a beautiful thing. It's
not a scary thing, because I think what being lost
does is it invites three words that were told to
(18:55):
be scared of, but I think they're the biggest invitation
to change and the words I don't know. We're fooling
(19:15):
ourselves if we think we know. You know, if I
said to you, so you know, what are you going
to do tonight, you could tell me your plans, but
you have no way of knowing how you're going to
feel tonight or what you're doing. You know what you
really will end up doing or where it will take you.
And when we embrace that, I don't know, it's somehow
opens us up to really what the world is like
(19:37):
in a in a very beautiful way. And you have
to be willing to get lost in order to actually
find who you are in your heart and then also
finding strength within yourself. Like what you said, it's like
I had no idea. I was capable of so many
things until I pushed myself you know, to completely let
go and be lost. And I was always somebody who
was a control freak, right, and so in a way
(19:59):
I took away my troll. And even now, what I'm
learning to do is to say, if somebody says, you
know where you're going to stay tonight, I used to
have a plan, and now I say, I don't know
because I don't know. Opens it up to being exactly
where you are in the moment. I think that's the
other thing we're not taught to do is to be
present right now. We're always thinking what's going to happen
(20:19):
down the line, what's going to happen in the future,
And we have this idea that that makes us feel safe,
but it really doesn't, because all it is is it's
making us not be where we are right now and
then worry about where we're going to be instead of
being present and grateful and where we are. So the
(20:43):
moment of being lost is actually this really beautiful thing
because it's that moment where all the answers of the
world no longer satisfy us. Because you know, looking back
on those times in your lives where you felt lost,
right when the answer came, it was in you. It
wasn't like, you know, you got some skywriting that said,
(21:05):
you know, now go to grad school. You know, it
was like the answer was in you and you were like, oh, yeah,
you know right, I always did love doing that. Or
you know it's there, Yeah, it's always been there. Exactly
what happens almost every time I think, But it's it's
it seems like it's about finding that stillness, absolutely, and
(21:27):
we are not a society that's comfortable with being still.
Are there any other beautiful experiences from being lost that
come to mind? Yeah? You know, I have a practice.
I drive the back roads. I mean I drive the
back back roads, right, And so when I first started
to drive them, I would get lost, and eventually, at
(21:50):
some point I would get so lost that I would
get panicked. And I would really begin to look at
that panic, like what are you scared of that you're
going to have to go knock on someone's door and
asked for help. But what I really began to realize
was that everybody I ran into on the back roads.
I've lived in rural places, and one of the things
when you live in rural places, especially if you live
(22:12):
in mountain roads, which I've lived on you always wave
at everybody when you pass them, And so one of
the things I noticed was that in my fear, I'd
be clenched so tight that I wouldn't behave like I
normally would, you know. But if I could remember to
just be present and wave, I would see all the
help all around me. And at one point I was
(22:33):
taking this photograph it's still one of my favorite photographs.
I photograph on the road and I'm standing in the
middle of the road and I'm waiting for the cars
to pass to get this shot. And every single car
stopped and asked me if I needed help, no matter,
and and I never felt scared. I never felt harassed.
I felt like everybody genuinely wanted to make sure I
was okay. So on the same road trip UM I
(22:56):
was in driving from Colorado to Texas, and the sky
started to get like super super dark, and I've gotten
stuck in the Texas Panhandle and ice storms and lightning storms,
and I started to get worried because it was tornado season,
and I started to get that totally anxious feeling. And
I'm driving along and I checked the weather and it
(23:16):
shows there's major weather coming my way, and I'm thinking,
what an idiot you shouldn't take in the back roads.
Who cares about those photographs and those nice people you
talked to about help. You should have stayed on that,
you know, And I'm like, no, you do this as
a practice. What does a practice mean? A practice means
you have to be present right where you are. So
I'm driving on this back road and all of a sudden,
I swear to you. You know, we all have this thing,
(23:38):
especially those of us who are raised Christian, where we think,
like when we're really lost, like please God give me
a burning bush, you know. So I'm driving along like thinking,
am I crazy? What am I doing? What am I doing?
And then all the questions come in right and I
swear to God, this red stream of light, like something
out of you know, like a sci fi movie, about
(24:00):
ten miles ahead of me, beams straight down, like one
stream of bright red light. And it was there for
the whole ten miles that I drove. And I'm looking
at this thing and I'm trying to take pictures and
I'm like, oh my God. And right after it disappeared,
it started to pour like that kind of torrential you
(24:22):
can't gully washer you can't see anything. And I have
this big smile on my face because I realized the
whole day was my burning bush. That every time, like
I thought, oh my god, I'm in the middle of nowhere.
If something happened, what would I do. Everybody came and
talked to me and asked me if I needed help.
And then when I thought, God, I'm crazy for taking
these back roads. I could have already been at the hotel,
(24:43):
you know, in on a highway, there's my burning bush moment.
And what it what it really taught me was whenever
we're led to get lost, we're going to be bombarded
with voices telling us this is not safe, this is
not cool, and exactly the opposite happens. If we can
stay with it, the people, the situations, the messages from
the universe will come and they will say to us,
(25:07):
you know, you're in exactly the right place and you
are safe. And the next day when I got to
my job, you know, it had taken me a lot
longer because driving the back roads takes longer, and my um,
my client, I got there and my client was like, wow,
you seems so energized. You worked all weekend in Colorado
and then you just drove two days and I'm like, yeah,
(25:28):
because when you really show up to your own heart,
the world shows up to you. And we're not taught that.
We are not taught that we're like, find the plans,
stick to it. It's like, you know what the plan is,
not what we think it is. I think the most
(25:56):
comforting thing for me this week is realizing that if
you feel lost, you're not alone. It's easy to think
that everyone has it together sometimes, but we're all lost
at some point and that's okay. And there's no quick,
fixed solution to feeling lost. But the good news is
is that during our lives, the feeling will come and go,
and like Victoria, maybe we should be a little bit
(26:17):
more open to embracing that. The key for me to
really finding a good way of being lost, because there
is that sense of being lost of literally like your
bouncing off the walls and you're you know, the voices
are reverberating inside your head and you have no way
of stealing them. I cannot over emphasize enough the need
(26:38):
to develop a practice, and for me, my practice was
about finding what I've come to call my magic word,
the word joy. For me, is this word that always
gets me out of my head and into my heart.
The moment I'm in my heart, I cannot help but
connect with people around me, and then I care about
the world and then it's like it's sort of makes
(27:00):
the circle come around full. And so finding what that
was and it's not joy for everybody. I've begun asking people,
and people have thrown out all kinds of different words.
But the real thing is developing these practices, whatever they are,
that when push comes to shove and those terrifying moments
of your life, you make yourself do them because it's
(27:20):
the voices in your head that will scree up every
single time. And whatever the practice is that can get
you out of your head, that'll save your life. M
hm hm. And of course we want to know what
(27:48):
you think. When have you felt lost and what did
you do? You can write to us at the Question
Booth at house to forks dot com or tweeted us
at question Underscore Booth with your answer. We'd like to
give us special thanks this week to executive producer Julie
Douglas and a Victoria Price for sharing her wisdom with us.
We'd also like to thank pont City Market for hosting
the Question Booth. The Question Booth is written, edited and
(28:10):
scored by me, Dylan Fagan, and my co host Kathleen Quillion.
Thank you Kathleen, Thanks Dylan, and thanks to everyone who
came into the booth and spoke to me about this question.
And if you're in Atlanta, you can visit the Question
Booth too. We're on the second floor Pont City Market
to five pm Friday through Sunday. Also, if you like
what you hear, we'd love if you give us a
(28:31):
quick review on iTunes helps other people find the show. Okay,
So as usual, I'm curious what are we talking about
next week? We're listening to the answers to the question
does everything happen for a reason? The platitude statement that
sometimes people will say after something horrible happens, Oh, everything
happens for a reason. I think is is really hard
(28:53):
to take. That's definitely a big question. I'll have to
think about that one, but until then, see you in
the Question Poth.
At some point we all feel lost. Part of that
might be because there's so many different ways that someone
can be lost. Maybe it's when you can't decide on
a career, or when you're feeling lonely. Maybe you're truly
in the middle of nowhere without a sense of direction.
And there's a fascination with getting lost and the freedom
of being lost that permeates so much of film and literature.
(00:25):
We're so proud, Rudd, what are you going to do now? Upstairs?
For a minute? I mean with your future? You're lying. Well,
that's a little hard to say. And when I think
of being lost, I think of Ernest Hemingway. He was
even part of the Lost narration of authors, along with F.
(00:45):
Scott mitch Gerald and Gertrude Stein. They wrote about characters
who seem to be aimlessly wandering through life without any
true cause or purpose, and yet these characters are still
adored today. Hemingway Son Also Rises is a book that
I could read over and over again. When I first
read it, I was very young, and I told my
(01:07):
parents I was going to be an expatriate like Jake
Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley. I would travel the world
and my life would be filled with art and culture
and passion. But the older I got and the more
I analyzed the characters, I realized they're actually all pretty
lost in life and have no real drive. Even at
(01:28):
the end of the book, the characters seemed to be
right back where they started. As an adult, the idea
of wandering through life would sadden me, but I swooned
at the idea when I read it in the pages
of my favorite Hemingway book. Why are we so enchanted
by the idea of being a wanderer but are still
uncomfortable with it in our real lives? That's what we're
(01:50):
covering on this week's episode, Getting Lost, Feeling Lost and
listening to answers to the question when in your life
have you felt lost? M h M. Welcome to the
Question Booth. I'm Dylan Fagin and I'm Kathleen William and
(02:12):
we're glad you're here to get lost with us and
the Question Booth. We ask people a big question each
week and find a pattern in their answers, and this
week's pattern was people believing that being lost isn't always
a bad thing. People felt we needed to be okay
with being uncomfortable sometimes and not dwell on what we
think we should be doing with our lives. And we'll
(02:32):
also be talking to Victoria Price. She's even written a
book that's a real meditation on being lost and embracing it.
And speaking of literature, let's start this week's episode with Hunter.
I think it's kind of human nature to get lost
from time to time, and it kind of find your
way back. And that's the fun of life. You know,
(02:53):
A good story doesn't involve some money knowing exactly what
they're supposed to be doing the whole time. Like the
best characters are just like wandering, you know. And I
mean that's the thing, is like what is finding yourself?
I think we're all just kind of works in progress.
I think when we feel lost sometimes we feel like
we're the only ones who's lost. Because that was something
like when I was leaving Georgia Southern. Just to note,
(03:14):
Georgia Southern is a school about three hours southeast of Atlanta.
A lot of the people that I was friends with
down there, like seemed like they knew what they were doing.
They seemed like they knew their major for sure. They
seemed like they had it figured out and like maybe
they weren't doing as well in classes as maybe they
seemed like they were sure that's what they should have
been doing. But once I got back here and like
figured out what I was doing, I figured out that
(03:36):
like you can know and still be lost, you know
what I mean, And everybody's just kind of faking it
because everybody's scared to admit that they're lost. I think.
But like when you find somebody that you can relate to,
especially like in literature, but in life too, you know,
you find somebody else who's willing to like share that
they're lost with you, that's kind of important. It's human nature.
And I think, especially when we're in school, you just
(03:56):
look around and you like that person has it all together,
and it's like usually they don't. I was about to say,
I think that that's just something that like is on
TV shows and movies and like the person figures it
all out and they've got it all together. I don't
think anyway has it all together, you know. I think
at different parts of your life you have certain stuff together,
and you have some stuff that you're like, you know,
I don't have any idea which way is up and
(04:17):
which ways down. I think that's important to kind of
think about when you're lost. There's a quote that's all
over here in Atlanta, and I'm for drawing a blank
on who it is right now, but that not all
who wander are lost. I like that, you know what
I mean. I think sometimes that's what life's about, is
wandering around and not knowing. Then you know, you find
more of who you are, more of what you're looking
(04:39):
for than you even realized. I think we're all lost.
It's understandable that when you're in your twenties or you're
just graduating from college, that you might feel adrift. It
could be the first time that you're on your own too.
You can have job experience or a degree, but a
lot of folks are older than you will still call
you a kid. Maybe you're proud of your resume and
you've worked really hard, but jobs are telling you that
(04:59):
you just don't have the experience. Yeah, this can really
leave you feeling lost, and some studies suggest that this
can lead to a lot of pain and depression. Young
people are suffering more from depression than previous generations, and
the onset of depression has dropped from our forties and
fifties to our twenties. So yes, the pressure and stress
(05:20):
of starting your life as your own person is one
time you can feel profoundly lost, and we heard a
lot of that in the booth this week. Here's Lily.
I mean, honestly, I think that I'm in a position
right now where I'm in transition from one thing to another,
and I think that those are the times in my
life that I've tried to feel lost. I don't know,
I feel like I'm in one right now, but I
(05:40):
wouldn't say I'm lost. I would say I'm on the
way to something different that I haven't done before. Sometimes
it is nice when you are forced to be uncomfortable
or change is usually when you have the most growth
within yourself. You just have to be open to that,
to being uncomfortable. I think a lot of us struggle
with that. Yeah, I used to struggle with it a
(06:00):
lot when I first went to school, you know, when
I was like eighteen, I got out on my own
and I was like, this is uncomfortable. I don't like it.
I don't want any part of it. I don't know
what I'm doing and that makes me feel bad. And
I've learned over the years the uncomfortable and then not
knowing what to do isn't bad, and you have to
take it and keep moving forward and keep your eyes
(06:22):
on what you want or the things that you enjoy doing,
are the things that you're passionate about, and make those
the priority instead of thinking like this feels weird, you know,
and like I know so many people who have gotten
on a pathway and then found something else that they
liked better and just transitioned into that, not knowing that
that was what was going to happen to them at all.
(06:43):
Like that wasn't anywhere in the plan. So it doesn't
mean that you're wrong or that you messed up. It
just means that, like life happened, and you adjust. I
just thought of a great metaphor um. One of my
friends is a terrible, terrible driver. She's awful with directions.
(07:06):
She'll go and pull you know, six U turns in
one trip to somewhere twenty minutes away that we've been
to once a week for the past year. And then
there's also I see the people on the road that
are like, no, I'm gonna make this left turn across
this five lane highway that's full of people and SUVs
and semi trucks and I'm gonna make it happen because
I need to turn left. And like, I think one
(07:28):
time I was talking with somebody and they did the
same thing where like we missed it and she's like, oh,
I'm so sorry, we're gonna have to pull you turn,
and I was like, it's fine, I'll go up around.
I'll make it happen. It doesn't matter. But I think
it's the same thing with feeling lost. It's like, don't
be afraid to do something and then make the U turn,
come back to where you started and try again. There's
no harm in like backing out of something because you
(07:51):
didn't think it was gonna work out, or you thought
it was something different, and then you ended up not
being as into it as you thought. So try again,
you turn. That was Lily in the Question booth. We'll
be right back to hear more about being lost. Mm
(08:29):
hmmmm hm, and we're back. Thanks for joining us. And
as we're hearing from people in the booth and talking
about being lost and all its different meanings. This week,
we really want to emphasize how many young people came
into the booth and talked about feeling lost. I don't
feel like I don't know what I'm gonna do. You know,
I feel like I felt lost, like all throughout school constantly.
(08:52):
It's not, you know, uncommon for me to just pick
up and move. My sense of loss is like studying
for something I never wanted to be that would probably
to be this week for me. Honestly, um, I might
start crying whoa every day of my life. Maybe a
few months ago. I definitely felt very lost when I graduated.
I was texting my dad and I was like, I
(09:13):
feel so lost. So we've heard from young people about
how they currently feel lost, but the feeling is often
temporary and it's not always easy to see that in
the moment, but working through it can leave us with
a profound sense of clarity. It can be a pivotal
moment in your life. Here's Robert talking about one of
(09:33):
those experiences and this story. It sounds a lot like
a movie. I think from me as I've gotten in
my older years, I found myself again. But I can
think back to like a point in my life where
I think things changed for me, and it's meeting that
person where you didn't expect something to happen and like
(09:54):
a miracle takes you know, part And for me, it
was probably when I was seventeen years old and I
I grew up in New Jersey and I was in
let's just say the rougher part of New Jersey, and
my dad was, you know, not working, he was disabled,
he was you know, other issues there. He was an alcoholic.
And my mom and I you know, argued a lot
(10:16):
about my dad and kind of kicking him out of
the house or so I got to that point where
it was like him or me kind of thing. And
I had moved out of my house while I was
in high school, and uh, it was a tough period
for me, like in terms of thinking who I was
as a person, still trying to find myself. I wasn't
even going to school. I mean, it was a tough
period in my life. So I was very lost at
(10:39):
that point. And the interesting part of the story that
affects me personally because it's like one of those moments
where if that didn't happen, and I don't know where
i'd beat today. But one day I remember walking by
this park and some guys, random guys came out of
a liquor store they're older than me, and they had
a couple of six packs of beer and they jump
(11:00):
done this pickup truck and I saw one familiar face
and that familiar face was a short order cook that
worked next to the drug store where I worked in
this town of Nork. And he's like, hey, Bob, you know,
hop on. So I hopped on the back of this
truck and we went just like around the corner to
somebody else's apartment. And the strange part that works from
(11:23):
there is everybody went to this apartment and into this driveway,
and the short order cook guy like grabbed me by
the shoulder and he took me aside, and we stood
across the street by the park. So I'm looking at
across the street at all these other people with the
beer and everything it's happening, and the guy that's with
me is just some random stranger that I've never met
before other than you know, he would cook my meal,
(11:44):
you know, for a breakfast or lunch. And he took
me aside, and then he proceeded to tell me what
was going to happen next. He was like, a car
is gonna pull up, Like another car pulled up. He's
like there's gonna be an altercation, and there was an altercation.
You know, He's like some he's gonna pull out a
baseball bat. And it did mesmerize me, and the fact
that he was like basically for telling what was going
(12:05):
to happen. And then he's like, we need to run.
He's like, there's gonna be gun shots. Run into the park.
So we do that, and of course there are gunshots,
like I can hear them. And I run with this
guy and my adrenaline is pumping and we get further
into the park and he uh proceeded to tell me
and talk about my family, and and I asked him
questions too, like I'm like, who are you? Like, you're
(12:26):
just the guy that works behind the counter. Like he's like, no, Bob,
because he goes, I came here for a particular reason.
I came here to help people, and that's why I'm
in this position at him. And it was almost kind
of like a heaven on Earth kind of thing. It
was very surreal for me, and that he proceeded to
tell me about my family. He pretty much at the
end said, you know, I know you don't like your
(12:47):
dad and you moved out of your house. But he's like,
I see your mother, and your mother is crying, and
he goes, I see her sister and she's crying. You
need to go home to them because they need you.
And when he said that, literally, I ran back home.
Like it was like four miles from my house and
I and I went home and never really looked back.
(13:08):
And years later I asked my mom. I was like,
this guy had to know, like maybe my mom told
him like, hey, you need to intervene. She had no
idea who this guy was. His name was Alex, have
no idea what his last name was. The crazy part
is I always tell people like, guess what the name
of the diner was where he worked. It was called Heaven.
That was the name of the That was the name
(13:28):
of the dinery. We're done. So for me, that was
a time when I was lost and I found myself
again because I had not applied to any colleges and
I wasn't even thinking of college at that time because uh,
you know, before that situation was just so miserable and
like things kind of fell into place after that for me,
a guy from shell Oil on a very well to
do town kind of plucked me out and gave me
(13:50):
a scholarship, a four year scholarship to uh Engineering School.
But like when you go back to being lost, that
was the lowest of lows in my life. And maybe
that's what I needed, like somebody to pick me up
and carry me across the finish line. Now that we've
(14:13):
heard about being lost, let's hear about embracing it. We'll
be right back with an interview with Victoria Price. M hm,
(14:40):
and we're back. And recently we had the opportunity to
talk with Victoria Price. She's an author and designer. She
recently wrote a book called The Way of Being Lost.
She's also the daughter of Vincent Price, which we mentioned
because the way she lives and travels now is so
different from the life she knew growing up. Let's let
Victoria splain well. I grew up in a family that
(15:02):
valued accumulation, and I grew up in a family that
in a way embodied the American ideals. I grew up
in a nine thousand square foot house with a family
who drove a Rolls Royce, a dad who was an iconic,
world famous movie star, and our house was My mother
(15:23):
was a designer, so our house was constantly photographed and
it was in architectural digest or house and garden and
and so it was really this lifestyle that was very
much about, uh, the things that surrounded you, bolstering this
idea that life is about accumulation and possession and identity
(15:45):
and all of those things. And when you're a kid,
you just sort of take that in you think, oh whatever,
But as you get older, you realize there's a value
placed on those things. And from the time I was young,
I found myself wanting to pull away from that, but
not really understanding what it meant. So when I was
in my early twenties, I lived in the mountains to
(16:05):
the east of Albuquerque, New Mexico, in a log cabin
with no running water and no heat, and we squatted
and we dug our own out houses, and I would
go out with a chainsaw that had been stolen from
the US Force Service, not by me, and uh and
go out and cut my own firewood. And I did
that for two years, and I just had this urge
(16:27):
to feel what it would be like to not be
surrounded by fame and fortune and all of that stuff.
But eventually, of course, I got called back into that world,
and I feel like my whole life has kind of
been this this push pull, this ebb and flow between
the world that I grew up in, which is the
world that we're all taught to aspire to in a way,
(16:48):
this world of having and being and an identity, and
then this feeling that I never felt like myself in
that world. Fully, it's it's tantalizing, it's appealing. It you
feel good when you have the stuff and you but
I never really felt like myself. And I realized that,
like one of the best days of my life I
(17:08):
can remember was I didn't have anyone to go chop
the wood with, and I drove, you know, two and
a half hours out with my dog by myself with
the chainsaw, and I chopped all the wood and I
halt put loaded it all up into the pickup and
I drove it back. And I remember feeling like nobody
ever taught me I could be this self sufficient. So
that was in my twenties, but it gave me the
(17:30):
feeling that I could survive anywhere. But by the end
of my forties, I was really in this place where
again this push pull, like I kept my life had
kept falling apart, and I never really understood why, and
then I kept rebuilding it back to be what I
thought it was supposed to be, and then it would
get back to where it was supposed to be, and
I thought, I don't really like this. And at the
end of my forties, I had this kind of conversation
(17:52):
with myself in the mirror, and I thought, Wow, you're
doing everything right, and you keep doing everything right, and
you're miserable. And I vowed that I would change my life,
but I had no idea how. And what finally I
came to realize was I had to be willing to
lose everybody else's idea of who I should be. I
had to be willing to lose all the old stories
(18:12):
that had attached themselves to me. I had to be
willing to lose the world's idea of what we're supposed
to do, what we should do. And so the last
seven years have been this path of being willing to
get lost. And the funny thing is, so I'm at
the end of I believe in seven year cycles, and
I'm at the end of the seven years, and people
(18:35):
keep saying, how do you feel? And honestly, I think
I thought I would feel like, Oh, I know what
I'm supposed to do. I do know what I'm supposed
to do, but not in the way I thought. Because
when people say how do you feel, I say, I
feel lost, But this time it's a beautiful thing. It's
not a scary thing, because I think what being lost
does is it invites three words that were told to
(18:55):
be scared of, but I think they're the biggest invitation
to change and the words I don't know. We're fooling
(19:15):
ourselves if we think we know. You know, if I
said to you, so you know, what are you going
to do tonight, you could tell me your plans, but
you have no way of knowing how you're going to
feel tonight or what you're doing. You know what you
really will end up doing or where it will take you.
And when we embrace that, I don't know, it's somehow
opens us up to really what the world is like
(19:37):
in a in a very beautiful way. And you have
to be willing to get lost in order to actually
find who you are in your heart and then also
finding strength within yourself. Like what you said, it's like
I had no idea. I was capable of so many
things until I pushed myself you know, to completely let
go and be lost. And I was always somebody who
was a control freak, right, and so in a way
(19:59):
I took away my troll. And even now, what I'm
learning to do is to say, if somebody says, you
know where you're going to stay tonight, I used to
have a plan, and now I say, I don't know
because I don't know. Opens it up to being exactly
where you are in the moment. I think that's the
other thing we're not taught to do is to be
present right now. We're always thinking what's going to happen
(20:19):
down the line, what's going to happen in the future,
And we have this idea that that makes us feel safe,
but it really doesn't, because all it is is it's
making us not be where we are right now and
then worry about where we're going to be instead of
being present and grateful and where we are. So the
(20:43):
moment of being lost is actually this really beautiful thing
because it's that moment where all the answers of the
world no longer satisfy us. Because you know, looking back
on those times in your lives where you felt lost,
right when the answer came, it was in you. It
wasn't like, you know, you got some skywriting that said,
(21:05):
you know, now go to grad school. You know, it
was like the answer was in you and you were like, oh, yeah,
you know right, I always did love doing that. Or
you know it's there, Yeah, it's always been there. Exactly
what happens almost every time I think, But it's it's
it seems like it's about finding that stillness, absolutely, and
(21:27):
we are not a society that's comfortable with being still.
Are there any other beautiful experiences from being lost that
come to mind? Yeah? You know, I have a practice.
I drive the back roads. I mean I drive the
back back roads, right, And so when I first started
to drive them, I would get lost, and eventually, at
(21:50):
some point I would get so lost that I would
get panicked. And I would really begin to look at
that panic, like what are you scared of that you're
going to have to go knock on someone's door and
asked for help. But what I really began to realize
was that everybody I ran into on the back roads.
I've lived in rural places, and one of the things
when you live in rural places, especially if you live
(22:12):
in mountain roads, which I've lived on you always wave
at everybody when you pass them, And so one of
the things I noticed was that in my fear, I'd
be clenched so tight that I wouldn't behave like I
normally would, you know. But if I could remember to
just be present and wave, I would see all the
help all around me. And at one point I was
(22:33):
taking this photograph it's still one of my favorite photographs.
I photograph on the road and I'm standing in the
middle of the road and I'm waiting for the cars
to pass to get this shot. And every single car
stopped and asked me if I needed help, no matter,
and and I never felt scared. I never felt harassed.
I felt like everybody genuinely wanted to make sure I
was okay. So on the same road trip UM I
(22:56):
was in driving from Colorado to Texas, and the sky
started to get like super super dark, and I've gotten
stuck in the Texas Panhandle and ice storms and lightning storms,
and I started to get worried because it was tornado season,
and I started to get that totally anxious feeling. And
I'm driving along and I checked the weather and it
(23:16):
shows there's major weather coming my way, and I'm thinking,
what an idiot you shouldn't take in the back roads.
Who cares about those photographs and those nice people you
talked to about help. You should have stayed on that,
you know, And I'm like, no, you do this as
a practice. What does a practice mean? A practice means
you have to be present right where you are. So
I'm driving on this back road and all of a sudden,
I swear to you. You know, we all have this thing,
(23:38):
especially those of us who are raised Christian, where we think,
like when we're really lost, like please God give me
a burning bush, you know. So I'm driving along like thinking,
am I crazy? What am I doing? What am I doing?
And then all the questions come in right and I
swear to God, this red stream of light, like something
out of you know, like a sci fi movie, about
(24:00):
ten miles ahead of me, beams straight down, like one
stream of bright red light. And it was there for
the whole ten miles that I drove. And I'm looking
at this thing and I'm trying to take pictures and
I'm like, oh my God. And right after it disappeared,
it started to pour like that kind of torrential you
(24:22):
can't gully washer you can't see anything. And I have
this big smile on my face because I realized the
whole day was my burning bush. That every time, like
I thought, oh my god, I'm in the middle of nowhere.
If something happened, what would I do. Everybody came and
talked to me and asked me if I needed help.
And then when I thought, God, I'm crazy for taking
these back roads. I could have already been at the hotel,
(24:43):
you know, in on a highway, there's my burning bush moment.
And what it what it really taught me was whenever
we're led to get lost, we're going to be bombarded
with voices telling us this is not safe, this is
not cool, and exactly the opposite happens. If we can
stay with it, the people, the situations, the messages from
the universe will come and they will say to us,
(25:07):
you know, you're in exactly the right place and you
are safe. And the next day when I got to
my job, you know, it had taken me a lot
longer because driving the back roads takes longer, and my um,
my client, I got there and my client was like, wow,
you seems so energized. You worked all weekend in Colorado
and then you just drove two days and I'm like, yeah,
(25:28):
because when you really show up to your own heart,
the world shows up to you. And we're not taught that.
We are not taught that we're like, find the plans,
stick to it. It's like, you know what the plan is,
not what we think it is. I think the most
(25:56):
comforting thing for me this week is realizing that if
you feel lost, you're not alone. It's easy to think
that everyone has it together sometimes, but we're all lost
at some point and that's okay. And there's no quick,
fixed solution to feeling lost. But the good news is
is that during our lives, the feeling will come and go,
and like Victoria, maybe we should be a little bit
(26:17):
more open to embracing that. The key for me to
really finding a good way of being lost, because there
is that sense of being lost of literally like your
bouncing off the walls and you're you know, the voices
are reverberating inside your head and you have no way
of stealing them. I cannot over emphasize enough the need
(26:38):
to develop a practice, and for me, my practice was
about finding what I've come to call my magic word,
the word joy. For me, is this word that always
gets me out of my head and into my heart.
The moment I'm in my heart, I cannot help but
connect with people around me, and then I care about
the world and then it's like it's sort of makes
(27:00):
the circle come around full. And so finding what that
was and it's not joy for everybody. I've begun asking people,
and people have thrown out all kinds of different words.
But the real thing is developing these practices, whatever they are,
that when push comes to shove and those terrifying moments
of your life, you make yourself do them because it's
(27:20):
the voices in your head that will scree up every
single time. And whatever the practice is that can get
you out of your head, that'll save your life. M
hm hm. And of course we want to know what
(27:48):
you think. When have you felt lost and what did
you do? You can write to us at the Question
Booth at house to forks dot com or tweeted us
at question Underscore Booth with your answer. We'd like to
give us special thanks this week to executive producer Julie
Douglas and a Victoria Price for sharing her wisdom with us.
We'd also like to thank pont City Market for hosting
the Question Booth. The Question Booth is written, edited and
(28:10):
scored by me, Dylan Fagan, and my co host Kathleen Quillion.
Thank you Kathleen, Thanks Dylan, and thanks to everyone who
came into the booth and spoke to me about this question.
And if you're in Atlanta, you can visit the Question
Booth too. We're on the second floor Pont City Market
to five pm Friday through Sunday. Also, if you like
what you hear, we'd love if you give us a
(28:31):
quick review on iTunes helps other people find the show. Okay,
So as usual, I'm curious what are we talking about
next week? We're listening to the answers to the question
does everything happen for a reason? The platitude statement that
sometimes people will say after something horrible happens, Oh, everything
happens for a reason. I think is is really hard
(28:53):
to take. That's definitely a big question. I'll have to
think about that one, but until then, see you in
the Question Poth.
The Question Booth News
Hosts And Creators
Dylan Fagan
Kathleen Quillian
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