Hello, this is Ditto.

When we set off on the journey called life, we pack a meticulous itinerary and a perfect map. But life has never obediently followed that map. When an unexpected downpour strikes, and the path we trusted is suddenly cut off, leaving us stranded in the middle of an unfamiliar forest, we fall into despair.

In her beautiful 2005 essay collection A Field Guide to Getting Lost, American author Rebecca Solnit speaks differently about losing one's way.
"To be completely lost, or to find oneself in a state of being lost, is a striking discovery. (...) Getting lost is the most fundamental condition for exploring the unknown."

Looking back, didn't the most dazzling and wondrous moments of our lives usually arrive out of nowhere—not from within our tightly woven schedules, but just outside them, right where our plans fell apart? The stars in the night sky we looked up at only because we were lost, the old bookstore we stumbled upon in a random alleyway, the unfamiliar resilience within ourselves we discovered through failure.

Getting lost is not a failure. It means a door has opened to a vast world that life has prepared for you, a world you could never have imagined through your own narrow field of vision.
Do not be too afraid of straying from your orbit.

[Today's Poem]

The Path of the Mind / Kim Jae-jin

There is a path in the mind, too,
stretching impossibly far or narrowing as much as it can,
leaving one breathless, it seems.

Leading to places we cannot go, and places we go but never return from,
where the path breaks off, there is a cliff,
and sometimes we want to leap off as we walk, it seems.

There is a door in the mind, too,
opening, closing, or sometimes twisting, it seems.

There is a jar in the mind, too,
keeping someone inside it,
wanting to let them ripen for a long, long time to savor, it seems.

The mind runs ahead of the body
on an evening of washing dishes with a clatter;
as the body, unable to rise, follows it out the door,
there is a path in the mind, too, and it seems to diverge.

Could you warmly welcome the unexpected coincidences and daunting uncertainties that come your way, as if they were a welcome guest?
Only where the road ends will your true path finally begin.
May a warm light shine upon your wandering footsteps.

This was Ditto.