What Am I Afraid Of?
Five hours until my train arrives in Prague, and a hunger for thought-sharing has taken over. At first, I pulled out my computer to write, then found myself reaching for my phone, opening my notes, and scrolling through my thoughts folder to revisit past musings—the muses I’d already managed to catch. I browsed ideas, questions, and possible answers when, paradoxically, a thought I’d been too lazy to capture crept into my mind—a thought complex, existential, and all-encompassing. What am I afraid of?
As a little kid, I would have told you that I was afraid of getting lost—a fear rooted in an unsettling experience where I woke up from a nap in a random airport to find my backpack, my grandma, and my sister, who I was traveling with, all gone. Now, the memory feels almost absurdly comical; I can’t help but smirk at my grandma’s bluntness—being careful not to get anything stolen as they went to the bathroom. That once-piercing experience has softened over time, yet the feeling of being lost has lingered, taking on a new shape as I’ve matured. It’s no longer the fear of being physically lost; rather, it’s the fear of being lost in the predictable patterns of life.
Now, I’m afraid of getting lost in the vast funnel of life, of slipping into the mundane. It’s a contradiction: I don’t want to vanish into life’s monotone rhythms, yet I yearn to feel lost again—not in fear, but in a way that brings freedom, an escape from routine. What once terrified me as a child has transformed into a need to break free from the trap of predictability and find something beyond the ordinary.
I know that not everyone feels this way. For many, the 'funnel of life' brings comfort, structure, and fulfillment. There are those who are genuinely happy within the simplicity and rhythms of daily life. But am I one of them?
There’s a certain comfort in familiarity, in the habits and roles we unconsciously adopt, yet that comfort can also bind us to routines we never intended to follow. I’ve always resisted the cliché, 'I found myself on that trip,' brushing it off as trite, but maybe there’s some truth to it. When we step outside the known, we’re given a rare chance to see ourselves from a new angle, free from the roles we’ve fallen into. Sometimes, breaking away from the ordinary is all we need to remember that reinvention is possible, wherever we are.
As a little boy lost in that airport, surrounded by unfamiliar faces and foreign sounds, I felt a strange mixture of fear and helplessness, a feeling that stayed with me long after. Right before this train ride, I was back in Budapest, wandering the winding streets under the shadow of Buda Castle, feeling both alone and curiously alive. It was here that I began to understand what had lingered from that childhood moment. Being alone in a foreign place, stripped of expectations, was a rare chance to simply exist and to act without any pretense—a feeling of freedom, but one that’s hard to explain. I realized that in getting lost, there’s something profoundly human: a quiet opportunity to move without a map, to test myself, and to see who I am outside of the familiar constraints. It’s a feeling I’ve come to appreciate, one that words can only brush upon yet might help others glimpse the beauty in those moments of solitude.
Have you ever let yourself get truly lost, even in the midst of a familiar life? Perhaps there’s a way to embrace the rhythm of the everyday without letting it consume us, to find moments where routine and adventure meet. Maybe the answer lies not in rejecting the ordinary but in letting it become a springboard into something more, an anchor that steadies us as we venture into the unknown. After all, could we appreciate one without the other?
