WanderLost

I only know how to get home if I sit on the left side of the bus. 

After two weeks, my brain has successfully registered landmarks on the left side of the street, but none on the right. So when all the seats on the left were full tonight, I missed my stop. Someone once told me that, genetically, women have a weaker sense of direction because of centuries of natural selection. In my case, I think it’s a mix of Darwin and an abismal data roaming plan. People who talk about the romance of traveling and fulfilling your wanderlust never tell you about the feeling of being hopelessly and entirely lost. They don’t tell you about being stranded in the wrong neighborhood without internet or call service, or about long nights in empty bus stops. They don’t tell you about loneliness.

Brazilian public transportation has been an exercise in everything Oprah would approve of: patience, humility, and acceptance of mediocre hygiene for the sake of a cultural experience. But mostly, it’s been a lesson in letting go. The advantage of speaking the local language is moot if you have no idea where you are or where you’re going. And for someone who has always sought to have a firm grasp on situations, that’s absolutely terrifying. It’s terrifying to cede total control to erratic bus lines and Verizon’s international data plan, and it’s terrifying to be a minuscule blue pulsating dot on an enormous map that won’t load. Back home, I have a medium-sized car and a GPS that keep me insulated from the minimal mayhem of a suburban town. Here, I have my feet and a beach on the east. And I am tiny.

I think traveling leaves us exposed and vulnerable. It throws us in the chaos of our weaknesses and laughs as we stumble our way through. And when we get comfortable on the left side of the bus, it throws us in the opposite direction. I think the true poetry of traveling isn’t in the views or the food or even the people you meet; I think it’s in those moments when you get lost. Because being lost means coming face to face with your smallness. It means that, in that moment, you belong absolutely to that city and to those people. And in a way, that’s liberating.

(I’m still grabbing a seat on the left side of the bus tomorrow, though.)