searching for the lost traveler

I heard a story the other week about a tour bus in Iceland with a lost traveler. It captured me deeply, in a way that I won’t claim to understand. It had a conversation with my soul.

The story is strange. In its most literal sense, it is not particularly beautiful. There is no inherent lesson. But it is ripe for interpretation.

It goes like this.

There was a tour bus travelling through Iceland. It made a stop near a volcano that also happened to be next to a shopping center. The travelers were allotted a few hours to explore the area.

During the excursion, one of the non-English-speaking travelers, previously dressed in all green, purchased a new purple outfit and changed into it. She did not think much of this wardrobe switch.

When everyone was getting back on the bus, one of the travelers noticed that “the woman dressed in green” was nowhere to be seen. They called out over the intercom, asking her to come forward, but no one budged.

Because of the language barrier, the woman who had changed outfits did not understand she was the one being summoned. Everyone on the bus checked the rows behind them and in front of them, but no one saw a woman dressed in green.

Over the course of the next few hours, the search escalated from a casual gander around the grounds to a full-blown, coastguard-led search for the lost traveler. Hundreds more people and several helicopters got involved.

Among the hundreds of people searching for the missing traveler was, of course, the “missing” traveler.

Several hours later, at around 3:00am, through some series of events, the lost traveler finally realized that she was in fact the one everyone was searching for.

She had spent the better part of the last day engaged in a search for…well…herself.

This story begs several questions—questions that probably wouldn’t occur (or matter) to most people. But as people like to tell me, I’m not like most people.

Among these questions are the following:

• Was the search “successful”?

• Can you find something that was never lost?

• Are there any patterns in our lives that mirror this search?

• Should adult tour buses use count-off systems?

I will attempt to answer some of these.

Here’s how I see it. The lost traveler was attempting to solve a problem that never actually existed. She was inducted into a search—the nature of which she did not truly understand. Ultimately, her only chance of “success” lay in rejecting the underlying premise of her existing search. To declare that she was never, in fact, lost in the first place and to subsequently terminate the search she was engaged in and pivot to a different search in which she reserved the possibility of success.

I think one of the reasons that this story captures me so deeply is that it reminds me of how I and many people I know have generally lived our lives to date. It is not an unfamiliar pattern, but this story highlights its absurdity.

Many of us find ourselves being inducted into “searches” by a combination of biology and culture—searches in which we have little to no chance of success.

We seek lasting happiness with a mind carefully designed not to be content for extended periods of time. We do so within a culture that funnels us toward the ruthless pursuit of more. More money. More beauty. More status. More fame. More [lots of other things that we don’t need in order to be happy beyond some base level that is much lower than many of us care to admit to ourselves].

Our biology and culture usher us onto the hedonic treadmill. It is easy to spend our entire lives there, engaged in the pursuit of more, all under the implicit (but often explicit) assumption that once we attain more of the thing we have been chasing, we will finally be happy.

But as the saying goes, you can never get enough of what you don’t need.

Whether or not we care to admit it, this is how many of us choose to spend our lives.

Over the course of our search for more, we will almost certainly take a few steps forward. We may even take lots of steps forward. But no matter how many steps we take, we somehow never seem to end up any closer to that damned carrot. We think the next step will bring us closer. But as soon as our front foot hits the ground, the carrot has somehow jumped forward by the exact same increment. “Okay, but the next step will be different,” we think. Quite a peculiar pattern of behavior.

Now, this isn’t an essay about how humans are greedy or stupid. I don’t think we are either of those things. I just think we’re a little confused. We have been led astray by a well-intentioned but dilapidated biological code and a (maybe less well-intentioned and) pervasive culture of “more.”

And while it is not our fault if we find ourselves with a fishing rod tied around our heads—juicy carrot eternally dangling off the end of it right in front of our faces—it is our fault if we choose to continue to live that way.

It is quite the predicament we find ourselves in. The “human condition,” as it is often referred to. Biology and culture set us up for success…if our goal is to survive in 50,000 BC.

If, however, our goal is to thrive in 2023—to achieve stable and lasting contentment through the attainment of meaning and other similarly worthy things—I would argue we are very much not set up for success.

To understand exactly how and why this is the case, we must first understand why moths love lamps.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably spent a lot of time wondering why moths are so insatiably drawn to lamps. I used to think it was because moths are stupid or greedy. But I recently learned it’s because they’re just confused. Sound familiar?

It turns out that moths’ brains have been programmed over millions of years to use moonlight as a means of nocturnal navigation. And for millions of years, this worked really well. By and large, moths have been getting where they needed to go in order to survive and reproduce (pass on their moon-seeking genes).

The only problem is that ~10,000 years ago, a highly-evolved species of chimpanzee (humans) discovered that they could repeatedly grow food in a single place, no longer needing to spend their lives in small, nomadic tribes roaming the Serengeti hunting Zebras and foraging for berries. This allowed humans to spend the time that they previously spent hunting and gathering, specializing in new crafts.

These new crafts led to more efficiently-run societies, which led to more free time, which led to even more time to spend specializing in new crafts. Over the course of 10,000 years, basic technological advancements like the wheel gave way to more advanced technological advancements like electricity.

And a few hundred years ago, when humans discovered electricity, we did something unprecedented. Something that no human or moth had ever seen. We harnessed it to make artificial light using light bulbs.

Fortunately for humans, these light bulbs allowed us to do things when the sun went down, increasing the amount of time we could spend perfecting even better technology (treating sick people, inventing computers, and lots of other amazing and useful things).

Unfortunately for moths, these light bulbs kind of look like the moon.

Evolution happens slowly. Progress happens quickly. Moths’ brains haven’t had time to evolve to understand that light bulbs are in fact not the moon and that flying towards a streetlamp is not going to get them closer to wherever it is they need to go to ensure survival.

It’s easy to poke fun at this sort of confusion when acted out by our winged friends. It’s also easy to forget that, like moth brains, human brains are also susceptible to the same sort of biology <> environment mismatch that leads moths to flock towards streetlamps.

Over the last 10,000+ years, the environment that we humans have found ourselves inhabiting (both physically and culturally) has changed beyond recognition. Our biology, however, is basically identical.

Our brains were carefully molded by the process of natural selection over millions of years to ensure that our bodies would survive at all costs in an environment of abundant danger and scarce resources. We find ourselves today, however, with that same brain, but in an environment that is, in most ways, the exact opposite (as it relates to danger and resources).

We are wired to seek things that don’t quite offer us the same evolutionary utility they once did.

We seek elevated social status because our brain thinks it is our only hope to attract and mate with an evolutionary fit partner. (In the world our brain thinks we live in, there are, of course, only seven or so potential mates in our 53-person tribe that inhabits the riverbed of Mesopotamia).

We seek to accumulate resources because our brain thinks it is absolutely vital that we ensure we have the means to acquire and consume enough calories to hold us over for potentially several days until the hunters of our tribe catch the next water buffalo.

We are spectacularly optimized for a world that no longer exists. We are engineered to strive.

But just because something “is” a certain way doesn’t mean that’s how it “ought” to be.

The is/ought fallacy (cousin of the naturalistic fallacy) leads one to conclude that precisely because something is a certain way means that it’s how said thing ought to be. It leads one to conclude that things which have occurred by natural processes are inherently good. And while that isn’t always the wrong conclusion to reach, there’s a reason why it’s called the is/ought fallacy and not the is/ought rule.

Over the past few millions of years, for better or for worse, the humans who incessantly strived for more were the ones who survived long enough to pass on their genes. That isn’t necessarily how things ought to be. But it is certainly how things are.

Somewhere along the way, our almost-ancestors—the ones who were content when the fire was almost warm enough, when the spear tip was almost sharp enough, when the map was almost accurate enough, when the cave-dwelling was almost beyond the reach of hungry lions—met their untimely demise. In doing so, they ensured the disappearance of the “contentment gene” (if you’ll allow me to make such an oversimplification of genetics for the purpose of this essay).

In the same way moths would almost certainly be better off with a revamped navigation mechanism in their brains that allowed them to distinguish streetlamps from the moon, humans would almost certainly be better off (or at least better at being happier more consistently) with a revamped striving mechanism in our brains that allowed us to distinguish the relative levels of status, resources, and other things that are truly necessary for the survival of our genes.

Unfortunately, neither of those things is likely to happen any time soon.

So here we are, equipped with a brain that thinks we are living in 50,000 BC (and is thus trying to solve 50,000 BC problems), all the while we are floundering for meaning and contentment in the year 2023.

I suppose, in a strange and dark way, it’s sort of a funny predicament. It’s almost funny enough to offset the existential unrest many of us feel on the average Tuesday. But unfortunately, it’s not quite funny enough to do that.

I have previously written about instincts / intuition and why we should listen more closely to what the versions of those things that each of us harbor have to say. And while I stand by the notion that instinct / intuition are generally useful, as with most things, there are always exceptions.

We must learn to discern.

Most “moth instincts” propel moths toward survival. But some of their instincts propel them towards streetlamps.

We humans find ourselves in a similar predicament.

Our version of the streetlamp might instead be a high-paying job that will make us miserable but afford us the means to buy things we don’t need to impress people we don’t care about. But it is, nevertheless, a streetlamp.

We humans may find ourselves engaged in the pursuit of something we do not need and, moreover, the attainment of which could never possibly satisfy us.

We, humans, may find ourselves scouring the side of a volcano at 2:00am in a small town in Iceland, trying to find a “lost traveler” who coincidentally happens to be ourselves.

As Drake (and my Uncle) like to say, we’re here for a good time, not a long time.

What a shame it would be to spend that limited time chasing a rotten old carrot dangling off the end of a fishing rod attached to our head.

What a shame it would be to spend that time engaged in the rat race. Because as Lily Tomlin likes to remind us, the trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.

I have no qualms with any person (or moth) who chooses to spend their time pursuing money, power, or status (or streetlamps). But the key word there is “choose.”

Life is too short to outsource the nature and premise of our searches. To be inducted into a search in which we definitionally cannot succeed.

There are no good paths or bad paths—right paths or wrong paths. There are only authentic paths and borrowed paths. Paths we choose to walk and paths we are mindlessly inducted into walking.

Many of us focus on speed. Few of us focus on direction. And as a product, many of us find ourselves going nowhere fast (think Iceland tour bus).

I get it. Following the crowd feels safer. Choosing is scary. To choose is to take implicit responsibility for any failures that might (and almost certainly will) befall us along the way.

I don’t know about you, but I’d choose potential greatness over assured mediocrity any day.

To each their own, I suppose.

I won’t claim to know what my “greatness” looks like quite yet.

I’ll let you know once I do.

Until then.

I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on my way.