I’m glad you asked.

When I first learnt to drive in London I used to take my car and drive into the middle of the city late at night.

Then I would invariably end up feeling really lost – and I knew that was going to happen, but I also knew that being lost would not last, eventually I would find my way.

The streets, particularly lots of them one-way used to confuse and sometimes even stress me. I still did this though, maybe once a week, usually around the weekend because I distinctly remember doing it once on a week night and then worrying as I was lost into the early hours of the morning and had work the next day. The BT tower in the middle of London was often a handy sight I watched out for to find my way and re-orient myself.

Anyway, the stress never lasted long – it was a good way to challenge myself on that score too – but it was a great way to both improve my driving skills, learn the roads and build my knowledge of London (just like a taxi driver – they even call it ‘The Knowledge’ – so like a subset of that I guess).

This was all back in the days long before the congestion charge came along when the streets in central London were perhaps even more crazy than they are now.

Whenever I travel in London I often recognise where I am from routes taken and learned back then. The places still look familiar many many years later.

So I may have felt lost, but I was wandering really.

This is just one example but what I’m describing here is the idea of imposing a challenge upon ourselves to try to overcome, to inflicting a small stress on ourselves to better cope with stress, to cause a little pain in order to come back stronger – to invoke a response.

It doesn’t have to be getting lost driving, it could be getting lost doing anything (and then subsequently finding your way).

Incidentally, when a vaccine to the Covid-19 virus is finally found, that is something which will be doing exactly that. That’s how vaccines work, they are a small dose of harm injected into our bodies which invokes a response – our body then fights, (in turn also fighting the Covid-19 virus) and our immunity system strengthens to cope with similar future threats – we come out stronger.

Getting lost in this sense could mean any challenge you impose on yourself which takes you right to the limit, which hurts, which pushes your boundaries (therefore increasing them, just like the vaccine). No pain, no gain.

And that’s why we would actually choose to get lost, so that we can find our way again, stronger.