How to Not Get “Adrift,” in the Desert. Lesson from the Rebelle about Life.

Being adrift in life happens to many of us, a lot of the time in life. It seems to happen when we wander off the path of some journey we were taking. Or when we are moved out of our comfort zones. Adrift means a state of confusion for the brain; it doesn’t know what to do with uncharted territory.

Being adrift is just part of the game of life. Contrary to what we may feel, life is random, and we are going through time bouncing off lots of things. Many of us look like the random dot in the illustration below. While others show a more directional path.

What causes some to move like an amoeba on a microscope slide while others seem to have it all figured out? It’s all about what we value and how we plot our course.

One of my most favorite yet challenging life activities is off-road rally events — the Queen of them all, the Rebelle Rally (www.rebellerally.com). Imagine over a week without any electronics. Going from Northern California through several states and ending up close to the Mexican border at the Imperial Sand dunes in Southern California. All of this, with just paper maps, orienteering skills, your navigating partner, and your off-road vehicle. Sound challenging? It is, AND it’s very easy to get lost, just as in life.

In a rally, we may find ourselves in the middle of the vast Imperial Sand Dunes of Southern California. Imagine it’s a beautiful blue sky day, winds are blowing sand into your ski goggles, and you are surrounded by tall sand dunes that obscure your view of where you want to go. All around you — in every compass direction — you can see the tops of ridges and mountains in the distance. Your destination could be in any direction but not as far as the ridges you see. Looking down at the map, we don’t know where we are, but we can see an X on the map, our destination. To make things worse, if we knew where we were, we couldn’t just decide to go in a straight line to our destination; the massive dunes are in the way.

First, we figure out where we are by finding recognizable mountain peaks in the distance and match them to peaks we can see on topographic maps in front of us. Using a compass to estimate a heading to the peak, we plot the three lines on the map by picking three peaks. We just used triangulation to figure out reasonably accurately where we are on the map. We decide that mountain #1 is the direction we will go; it’s generally in the direction of our X., but we will have to stay as true to the compass bearing as possible.

At some point, quickly, we snaked around the dunes and have to do the triangulation again, so we know where we are in relation to where we need to get to. We see enormous obstacles in our way and decide that going towards Mountain #2 for a while will get us around them. Again, we snake around and have to get out of the vehicle to triangulate where we are, look to where we want to go, see Mountain #3 is in the direction we want to go. We go, triangulate, find where we are, and repeat going in the direction we want to go. Eventually, we continue this process until we are sure we are right on top of our X. We can now gather points for navigating to the right place. (By the time we reach a day in the dunes, we are at the end of the rally, exhausted from a week of doing this navigating from thousands of miles away from our start.)

Does the above event sound a little like life? It should, if we could look down at ourselves from 30,000 feet in elevation, it would look like the paths our lives have taken and may take in the future. Of all the possible compass headings we could have taken in life, we chose some and moved in a direction. We hit obstacles, got around them, and maybe even decided to go another direction. Ending up where we are today.

Being adrift happens in orienteering and in real life. Imagine being in the middle of this colossal dune complex, and you are stuck. Maybe you got stuck in the sand, dug yourself out, and now you aren’t sure what direction to go. You could just stay there, live the rest of your life on that dune. Why not? You aren’t adrift anymore, you know exactly where you are, but you will live forever on that dune in the hot sun, without water and food. Sounds awful.

In life, we get adrift as well, and we often stay where it’s comfortable. We can’t see where we are going, might as well stay in that bad relationship or that awful job. It’s familiar; our brains know what to do even if we are unhappy. We go through the motions.

On the rally, we use a compass and vision of far-off mountains to find where we are on the map and plot a course to get us out. In life, our compass is what we want to accomplish and our personal values. Imagine a compass with all the possible values people have in life. The red quadrant is the area that is your values. Your values will vary and if you don’t know what they are, go find out what you value most!

The illustration’s point is to show that whoever this person is and whatever their values are, they value the concepts in the red areas. If this fictional person is going 180 degrees away from the red zone, they aren’t living their values; they are off course. If this person is bouncing around all over the compass, they look like the first illustration’s wandering path.

Recently, I had a conversation with my best friend, who is struggling with a relationship and real-life feeling of being adrift. I told her how we keep from being adrift in the middle of a sand dune complex and equating the compass headings as our compass and the big X we want to reach our goal in life. Using the compass as the possible directions but values instead of compass degrees, we are always at least on a path and one that rings true to us. We don’t know if we are at our destination until we reach it, and we can’t see the path in front of us. But we have this compass of values we can lay over the map. With a vague sense of where we want to go, we pick the mountains in the distance periodically and always make sure we move the way we want and in the direction we want.

The key for her was, she wasn’t living her values, nor was the relationship letting her. No matter how much she loved this person, the relationship was keeping her adrift. By thinking about where she wanted to go with her life and what she values most, she could see a path start to take focus in front of her. Of course, it took courage to take a step on the track even if she can’t see the whole thing. But she now knows she’s on the right path and in the right direction to get to where she wants to go.

Resources:

• Find out what you value most! https://www.discoveryourvalues.com/
• Learn about the Rebelle Rally https://www.rebellerally.com/