When was the last time you got lost?
It’s 5:30 AM. I’m walking down an empty street in Tel Aviv with a camera, as I’ve been doing at least once a week for years. Tel Aviv is the second-largest city in Israel, but on a global scale, it’s tiny. Its area is less than 7% of New York City’s and less than 4% of London’s. My photo-walks are typically confined to a few neighborhoods in the southern part of Tel Aviv, so you’d think that by now I know every building, every wall, every alley, and of course, every single street.
So, it’s 5:30 AM, the sun is just about to peek above the urban horizon, and I find myself on a street I never knew existed. I don’t know its name, and apart from a vague sense of direction, I don’t really know where I am. And it feels GREAT!
It’s been a while since I managed to get lost. Really get lost, that is. For a few minutes, I forget the fact that I’m in the city I grew up in and have been photographing for more than a decade. I feel like I’m in a foreign country, even though everyone around me speaks the same language I do. It doesn’t matter that I’m probably only five minutes away from a street I do know. I look around, and everything appears new and unfamiliar. I feel like an explorer in uncharted territory, and suddenly the magic happens: I find a little treasure I can use for my artwork.
The Power of the Unknown
It’s so difficult to get lost nowadays. And why shouldn’t it be? We’re on the grid 24/7. We can know our exact location in the universe at any given moment. We know exactly which train to take and when. We know which road to take to avoid traffic jams. When we plan a trip, we use Google Street View to get a glimpse of our hotel’s location weeks before we take off.
Is it possible that we’re losing the ability to get lost in ways beyond the geographical sense? Is it possible that by knowing exactly where we are all the time, we’re losing something more precious, like our ability to be surprised?
The unknown plays a significant role in creativity. Curiosity is the key to even the most basic learning experience, let alone to exploring new possibilities. So, how can we be curious when everything is known, planned, and expected? To be curious means to give in to the unknown — to embrace it. Using Google’s Street View is at best a minor act of curiosity. Going somewhere new without knowing what it looks like in advance is the real thing. That’s when you’re alert (in the positive sense), when you observe and absorb the fine details. That’s when you pay attention to things other people take for granted. And these are the foundations on which creativity is built.
By knowing exactly where we are, we use the safe, known path. We take no detours. We don’t look to our left or right. We simply don’t need to. Knowing where we are, we don’t even have to look ahead. With autonomous cars already a reality in some locations, chances are we’d spend even more time gazing at our smartphone screens instead of seeing the real world. If even our ability to move in the world is being delegated, will we have the motivation to look up and admire the view?
Any creative act is a detour. It relies on our ability to go somewhere unexpected, sometimes physically and sometimes mentally. Getting lost is an essential part of the game. We need to allow ourselves to get lost from time to time. We need to relearn to let go. And that’s a real challenge in this era.
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Three Ways to Get Lost
So here are three ideas that will help you get lost not just physically, but also mentally. Let’s start with the most trivial one to understand, but not necessarily the easiest to do.
Wander Aimlessly
To get a real sense of being lost, there’s nothing better than actually going somewhere you don’t know. Start anywhere, even near your home. The only guideline is not to know where you’re heading. Take random turns, don’t look at street signs, or drive to a city you don’t know very well. Whatever works for you (as long as you feel safe doing it) will do the job. Now, look around you and explore your surroundings. Don’t use a map or a GPS (at least until you’re ready to return). Try to absorb what you see, hear, and smell. Be attentive to what you think. Even if you’re still near home, treat this trip as if you’re visiting a place for the first time.
Even if you don’t manage to get lost for real, and even if you don’t find yourself on an unfamiliar street, letting yourself walk without thinking where you’re heading will free your mind to explore and discover things you might otherwise miss. Notice the buildings, the plants, the animals, the people. Let yourself be where you are, without knowing (or caring) where that is.
Hold That Search
Another way to get lost is when we face a problem.
When I started using Photoshop to post-process my artworks, I knew nothing about it. So how did I start? Google and YouTube, of course! There wasn’t a single problem I encountered that hadn’t already been asked, answered, demoed, discussed, and analyzed from every angle you could imagine. It was an incredibly efficient way to learn to use this powerful tool and harness it to my needs. I didn’t feel lost for a minute.
But effective as this method was, I had no sense of exploration. I got exactly the information I needed, but I didn’t know what I was missing along the way.
Doing a quick search for any question or problem we face is very tempting. With AI chatbots, there’s even less friction. We don’t have time to spare on the longer path — the path of exploration. We have a deadline, or simply something better to do than “reinvent the wheel.” But this is like getting to know a new city by setting the GPS to a specific location within it. It seems efficient, but at best, you’ll learn the shortest route to that location — no more, no less.
The alternative is simple. Every once in a while, try to learn something new (or solve a problem you’re facing) the hard way: by exploring it. It will take longer, and it might be more frustrating at first, but you’ll gain deeper insights. You’ll enjoy the path and find things you didn’t expect. Some of them might not be relevant to your immediate goal, but they might serve you in the future. Sometimes you’ll find out that the question you started with wasn’t even the right one.
Imagine
Almost everything around us urges us to be concrete. The tasks at work, the questions at school, and even some “creative challenges” are mostly designed to elicit a single concrete answer, usually by following a well-defined (if not trivial) set of rules.
The third level of getting lost is giving up the structure, the rules, and the concrete goals in favor of associating and imagining. It may sound easy, but what was trivial when we were children typically requires some practice as we grow up.
When most people encounter one of the CreativityMEDS experiences for the first time, their instinct is to try to understand what it means and what they’re expected to do. After a while, though, they start to let go: they keep the challenge in mind, yet they don’t look for any particular meaning. Practicing such free association and mental wandering is just like allowing yourself to get lost physically, only it happens entirely in your mind.
Allow yourself to associate, wander, and imagine. Get lost in writing, in painting, in photographing, in doodling, in observing, or in thinking. You never know what you’ll find inside your head. It’s an infinite playground.
The opposite of getting lost is taking a well-defined and well-known route. When choosing this path, there will always be fewer chances and less room for creativity. It’s the exploration mindset, the ability to wander with the abstract goal of discovering new things, which sets the foundations for new creations.
If you can plan every step of the way, there’s a good chance someone has already taken that path before you.