I am standing in the street in Bogota – suddenly. Where am I?!
I am in the shower in Rajkot – I look down at the tile floor and I forget. Where am I?!
I wake up and see the ceiling fan above me. Where am I ?!
This feeling of suddenly not remembering where you are, be it city, country, time zone, season, is common amongst travelers.
Is this feeling of disorientation caused by the broadening of one’s consciousness, being plugged into the matrix even further and becoming a citizen of the world? Or has traveling rendered us rootless, causing confusion in orientation and location? Are we connecting deeper or becoming more rootless?
Is it possible that in order to plug in deeper, you have to first unplug yourself?!
Tell me your thoughts … and your location.
Being unplugged allows for the possibility of being open to whatever presents itself. I would imagine that this leads naturally to a feeling of disorientation. Does this also suggest that by plugging “back” into the system that one is able to reestablish a sense of place? Maybe we do need to get back the interwebs once in awhile.
Hi, my name is Henry. I’m in Chile, and I want out. 🙂
I think I don’t believe it is good to be unplugged all together. By that I mean, totally off the reservation unplugged. In order to change the world you have to participate in it. But I do believe that when you check out now and then will allow you greater clarity when you do plug back in.
LOL @ you are in Chile and you want out! Only if I had a working tele-porter!
Or maybe everything just starts to look and feel the same after a while no matter where you are!
I absolutely have this “where am I ” feeling all the time – normally about once a week in the middle of the night for sure and sometimes while walking around a city. Crazy.
Those are all possible answers as to why we suddenly have no idea where we are. But then…I like to contemplate the possibilities of why on a bigger scale, beyond the obvious. I think this is why my brain hurts so often! 🙂
I find that airplane travel completely disorients me – it still amazes me that I can be in Bangkok eating street food one minute and ten hours later I’m looking up at Mount Kilimanjaro. The quick pace of change confuses me into: “Where am I?”
As for unplugging, I think it’s necessary from time to time to fully immerse and enjoy the present. But, this time also makes you appreciate the time plugged in as well. Balance is king 🙂
Of course, we have to ask ourselves whether we are really plugged in all the time ands just made to feel that we are unplugged at times. But then, can we only ask ourselves that when we are unplugged?
Wow, that was a bit too deep for 3.30am 🙂
LOL. Sometimes its easier to ask the questions that hurt your brain when you are unplugged. Or else all the other information overflow makes it tough to have a proper perspective. AH! Now my brain hurt! 🙂
I get this feeling when I’m standing in a strange kitchen and have that moment of ‘where are the [insert implement you need RIGHT NOW]???’
The other time is when my daughter asks questions like ‘do you remember that garden we went to where they had the bonsai’s?’ and I have to trawl back through every place we’ve ever visited that might have had a bonsai garden…’umm Chicago?’
I love it…”uhmmm Chicago?!”
I love the way children remember things and associate one thing to another seemingly random thing. Yet it makes perfect sense to them. I wish we all could retain more of that as we grow older.
It happens to me quite often. I work as tourleader for trips to Asia and Europe. Some nights/mornings i wake up and think that I am in one country but just fot à short while then I know were I am. This fall I’ll travel to different parts of China, South Africa, Cambodia and Vietnam. Right now I am in Swizerl… sorry in Sweden 🙂
Then sometimes you just give up and stop trying to figure out where you are. Where ever you are, you are.
Being plugged or unplugged (totally) are dangerous for me. The more plugged-in I am, the more bad news I hear. I stress, I get militant, I get down. Bad places. (Elections REALLY piss me off!). When I totally unplug, I tend to be more productive yet less inspired. My work and my life seem to lack the spark that sometimes gets in my eye (and I stress about the worldwide crap-fest that I know I am missing). Perhaps I will speak to my pshrink about this.
In the mean time, I will enjoy my time here, at the bottom of the ocean, where the cauliflower runs free and butterflies do the backstroke.
There is an interesting correlation between being connected enough to be inspired yet not so connected that you are just angry with the state of the world. I find not having a TV helps for me. You then become very selective about how much information you take in and from what source.
I do love a place where the cauliflowers run free and butterflies do the backstrokes. Do post-it notes cook you dinner and bacon cleans the house?