Maybe you’re feeling behind. Like the path disappeared while you were making coffee or paying bills or just trying to keep your head above the static. Like everyone else got the memo about which direction to walk, and you were in the bathroom, missing the announcement that would have saved you from this wilderness of uncertainty.
The world keeps insisting there’s a right way, doesn’t it? A proper sequence. Graduate, career, marriage, house, kids, retirement, death. A straight line drawn in permanent marker across the map of your life. But somewhere between the should-haves and the supposed-tos, you looked down and realised you’d been walking through tall grass for miles, no trail in sight.
But listen.
The way isn’t lost.
It’s just… wandering.
It slips out of the lines and into the fields. It veers when you try to steer. It curves like jazz—unpredictable, improvisational, finding beauty in the spaces between the notes you thought you were supposed to play. The path doesn’t follow the blueprints they handed you in school or the advice columns in magazines. It follows something older, something that remembers when roads were just deer trails and deer trails were just the earth’s way of breathing.
This isn’t a path you follow. It’s a rhythm you remember.
Like the way your grandmother hummed while washing dishes, no particular tune but somehow perfect. Like the way rain finds its way down windows, never the same route twice but always reaching the ground. Your path isn’t linear because life isn’t linear. It spirals and loops back and doubles over itself, creating patterns that only make sense when you stop trying to make sense of them.
You’ve been trained to think that not knowing where you’re going means you’re failing. But what if not knowing is the point? What if the wandering is the arrival?
So don’t wait for a map. Don’t beg the stars for coordinates.
Don’t refresh your horoscope app hoping the universe will finally text you back with clear directions. Don’t wait for the perfect mentor to appear with a leather-bound journal full of life hacks. Don’t hold your breath for the moment when everything clicks into place like a satisfying puzzle piece, because that moment might never come, and that’s okay.
Trust your feet. Trust the ache in your chest when something feels alive.
Trust the way your body knows things before your brain catches up. Trust the strange magnetism that pulls you toward certain books, certain people, certain conversations that light up parts of you that have been dormant. Trust the restlessness that won’t let you settle for safe when your soul is hungry for true.
That ache in your chest—that’s not anxiety. Well, maybe some of it is anxiety, but underneath that, it’s recognition. It’s your inner compass pointing toward magnetic north, toward the things that make you feel more like yourself and less like everyone else’s idea of who you should be.
Trust that wandering is its own kind of knowing.
The indigenous peoples of Australia have a concept called “walkabout”—a spiritual journey where young people venture into the wilderness to transition into adulthood, guided not by maps but by dreamtime stories and inner knowing. They don’t wander aimlessly; they wander purposefully, understanding that the land will teach them what they need to learn.
Your life is your walkabout. Every detour is data. Every wrong turn is a right turn to somewhere you didn’t know you needed to go. Every time you’ve felt lost, you’ve actually been found by something new—a strength you didn’t know you had, a passion you didn’t know existed, a version of yourself you didn’t know was possible.
Because not all who wander are lost.
Some of us are cartographers of the unmappable, explorers of the space between certainty and possibility. Some of us are collecting stories instead of achievements, experiences instead of possessions, depth instead of distance. We’re not behind—we’re underground, doing the root work, growing in directions that don’t show up on anyone’s timeline but our own.
Some of us understand that getting lost is just another way of saying “making room for surprise.” That not knowing is fertile ground. That the most interesting people are the ones who took the scenic route through their own lives and came back with tales worth telling.
Some of us are just done pretending we were ever supposed to know the way.
Done with the performance of having it all figured out. Done with the exhausting charade of confidence in a world that changes faster than anyone can keep up with. Done apologising for being human in a culture that worships the illusion of control.
Maybe the bravest thing you can do is admit you don’t know what you’re doing and do it anyway. Maybe wisdom isn’t about having answers; it’s about getting comfortable with better questions.
Keep walking. Barefoot if you can.
Feel the earth beneath your feet. Let your soles remember what your soul knows—that you belong here, on this planet, in this moment, in this beautiful uncertainty. Let the ground teach your feet the difference between wandering and being lost.
I’ll meet you just past the next bend.
Not because I know where you’re going, but because bends in the road are where the interesting people tend to gather. Where the light hits different. Where the stories are.
Until then, trust the journey. Trust the not-knowing. Trust that your path is perfect precisely because it’s yours.