My Favorite Place to Get Lost, Essay Example

When I have the time, opportunity, and inclination to be “lost” for a while, I prefer to be so in a supermarket. Part of the appeal is that, when my desire to be nowhere fades, I can actually accomplish something. The greater draw, however, is in the extraordinary panorama of life this most ordinary of settings offers.

I am not always out to watch people when I go. In this respect, the supermarket is a surprisingly liberating arena; anonymity and relative silence are usually intact there, and I can engage in walking the aisles as a phantom. I am free to be there, as I am no one in particular there. Then, there is something genuinely gratifying in the symmetry of a supermarket. There are lanes and aisles, and I can stroll through them at any pace I like, as if I were in a garden. I find, in fact, a good deal of my best reflective thinking occurs when I am engaged in this mindless choreography.

Beyond that, there is the hobby of observing humanity at an angle no other place quite provides. Grocery shopping is a very intimate activity, yet everyone goes about it under bright lights and in full view of their fellow man. This creates a silent, bonding effect; we are all there for one reason, we all object to the high prices, and we all know that each of us is doing the best they can. To me, this creates a sense of communion that many a church might envy.

Everything considered, I am not all that surprised when I discover, each visit, how much time I have spent in the supermarket. Lost or barely connecting with my fellow man, I can be whatever I choose to be there.