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We're so lost we don't even recognize that we've already found ourselves

At the end of September 2021, somewhere in Turkey, a man arrived at the trailhead of a path through a local forest. He found something unusual: a large group of people had gathered there to begin searching for someone lost in that same forest. Faced with such a situation, the newcomer joined the search.

Several hours later, neither the professional rescuers nor the volunteers had detected the slightest trace of the missing person. By this time, the authorities already had additional details to share: the missing person was Beyhan Mutlu, 50, who had gone to the forest with some friends to drink some alcohol, but he had not returned.

The volunteers began to shout “Mutlu! Mutlu!” And then someone (the man who had been the last one to join the search) said in amazement: “Why are you calling me? I am here with you!”

In short, Mutlu had joined a group of rescuers looking for him, without him knowing that they were looking for him and without the rescuers knowing that he was not only not lost, but that Mutlu was with them.

That is, I believe, exactly the situation of our world and of each one of us right now: we are so lost that we don't even know that we are lost and so we join our own quest to find ourselves in a place where we're not. And that's why we spent hours (days, years) looking for each ourselves without finding ourselves. 

The situation resembles that well-known story of the man who, at night, is crouched under a lantern and looking for something on the ground. A friend arrives and asks him what he lost. "A coin," explains the man. The two then begin searching but find nothing.

“Where exactly did you lose your coin?” the friend asks. “Like a block away. But I'm looking for it around here because there's more light here,” the man replies.

This is how we are: searching in one place (outside ourselves) for what we lost in another place (inside ourselves). And we don't even recognize we are searching for ourselves. We are so lost that we do not know that we are looking for ourselves.

As Nietzsche suggested (Beyond Good and Evil, 146), we are the monsters we fight and we are the abyss that, when we look at it, looks back at us. But since we do not recognize ourselves neither in the mirror of monstrosity nor in the mirror of the abysmal depth, we remain separated, alienated, from ourselves. 

Therefore, no matter how many more people we add to the search, or how many resources we use, or how much more technology we activate, we will never find our true selves because we are looking for ourselves where we did not lose ourselves. 

Such a disconnection from our selves means we are also disconnected from nature, from others, and even from the universe. For that reason, we can’t see the future where our best possible version actually is. 

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