On being lost.

Written by Calvin Hibbard, Counselling Psychologist

The psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion once offered a striking metaphor for certainty and uncertainty in a seminar at the Tavistock Clinic.

He suggested that we are all, in a fundamental sense, blind. The senses we rely on to understand the world do not reveal reality itself, but only an approximation of it.

In his metaphor, these senses are likened to a blind person’s walking stick. People move through the dark, tapping the stick against the ground and nearby objects, attempting to gather information about where they are and what surrounds them.

On its own, the stick provides no inherent meaning. Yet over time, and with experience, the individual learns to interpret the feedback it offers — the relationship between the stick, the self, and the environment.

In this way, the stick becomes indispensable, even essential. It functions much like a compass of GPS, offering orientation and a sense of security.

Eventually, whenever confusion or disorientation arises, we instinctively reach for our sticks.

They reassure us.

They tell us where we are.

Some of us become so adept at navigating the world in this way that we confidently offer our sticks to others: Here, try mine — it’s far superior for understanding reality. 

And here the conundrum emerges. The stick provides answers, and we come to trust it deeply, but at the cost of forgetting our fundamental blindness. Our tools grant us certainty, but they can also obscure the limits of our knowing.

This tension is hardly new. Philosophers have wrestled with it since Plato’s allegory of the cave — the enduring metaphysical question of what is real.

Many far cleverer than I have grappled with this question, and I won’t attempt to resolve it here.

Instead, I want to ask a different one:

If we are blind and lost, and if everything we take to be true can be questioned, then what is to be done?

In many ways, this question quietly underpins most therapeutic encounters.

It feels particularly urgent now, as we collectively move through some of the most uncertain and tumultuous times the world has faced in recent memory.

Rather than approaching this question in an abstract or theoretical way, I want to consider it pragmatically.

Naturally, this leads us to poetry.

Yes, poetry and the arts are not often associated with pragmatism, but throughout history they have captured our most profound experiences of doubt, disorientation, and uncertainty with remarkable clarity.

David Wagoner’s poem Lost offers a gentle yet surprisingly practical response to being lost. The poem was inspired by a Native American teaching story, traditionally told to a child who asks, what should I do if I get lost in the forest? 

Though the poem is read metaphorically, being lost in the forest was once a very real and dangerous concern. Wagoner writes from the perspective of an elder offering guidance:

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you

Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,

And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,

Must ask permission to know it and be known.

The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,

I have made this place around you.

If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.

No two trees are the same to Raven.

No two branches are the same to Wren.

If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,

You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows

Where you are. You must let it find you.

Several clear contemplations emerge from this poem.

First and foremost, it recognises the weight and gravity of being lost.

There is no inherent positivity in its tone, but rather a soberness — an awareness that being lost is a significant moment with very real effects. In this sense, the poem reminds us that we cannot sleepwalk through life. When we are always living for what is to come, we risk missing what is Here.

Returning to Bion’s metaphor, this is the danger of letting the stick lead us entirely.

Instead, the instruction is simple and firm:

Stand still. 

Stop wandering blindly.

Begin to pay attention.

The poem also invokes a sense of silence, as though true attention requires an openness to it. This, to me, feels like an essential capacity — one that can be learned and cultivated.

Without the ability to tolerate and remain with silence, we become overwhelmed by the many competing voices inside us, each insisting it knows the way.

Rather than frantically searching for answers or clinging to familiar tools, the poem invites us to pause, listen, and allow our surroundings — internal and external — to orient us, perhaps even to find us. It calls us to remain present with ambiguity, without prematurely seeking resolution, to allow room for novelty.

Being lost, then, is not framed as failure, but as an opportunity — a moment to return to presence.

Something happens in us when we are lost. We become vulnerable and fall back on old habits, patterns of behaviour, defences or muscle memories: sometimes amusing, sometimes calming, sometimes distressing, and sometimes making the experience of being lost even worse.

This invites a question worth reflecting on: What am I like when I’m lost?

In my work with clients and patients, I often return to this idea.

If we are lost and confused, lost and distressed, lost and alone, lost and afraid — why not also experiment with being lost and appreciative, lost and inquisitive, or, if the moment allows, simply lost.

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