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Hi Christopher. Your travel log tells a wonderful story of a real adventure. It’s said that losing something is one of the three main sources of anxiety, and your response beautifully illustrates what we have been studying: about positioning as an alternative to adopting a position. You could see yourself ready to enter the anxiety of loss, then managed to remain present to that tendency rather than swept away by it. It seems that you took Little Bo Peep’s advice a step farther: whereas she leaves her lost sheep alone, hoping that they will come home, wagging their tails behind them, you tracked them down and accompanied them home. Your technique seems likely to work in a greater range of situations! What your adventure reminds me in my own life is a time when the future seemed to have run out, and it was through remembering that I was present at that very moment that I relaxed and was able to step forward again. I guess that’s another kind of familiar loss, in which a false “self image” causes fear and pain. I like your idea that we can harness the self-image’s knowledge, rather than being ruled by it. — Michael

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