A Short Defense of Getting Lost
On the disappearing pleasure of not knowing where you are.
A phone in every pocket has made genuine, unbothered lostness almost impossible to find, which is a smaller loss than it sounds and a real one anyway.
It has become genuinely difficult to get lost, in the old sense, the sense where no one and nothing can tell you exactly where you are and how to get back.
This is obviously a convenience. It is also, I think, a quiet loss of a specific kind of attention - the attention you pay to a place when you actually have to notice it, rather than simply follow an arrow across it.
I do not want to be lost often. I do think I want the option, occasionally, and I am not sure how much longer that option will remain genuinely available.
