Some times, you jump out of a swing, and you bust your knee. Life happens.

Some times, you buy flowers and show up at the doorstep of the girl you've eyed for so long, but she's with someone else. Life happens.

Some times, you don't understand quantum mechanics and head to the final. You get an A+. Life happens.

Sometimes, you ask, Why, and the void answers with silence--with a confusing cacophony of phony reasons.

But when Life happens, grace is not far behind: and it's not an answer you can question.

I have a hobby that I spare my friends. It's one I engage in when there's no pressure to be on time--when there's no pressure to be at a particular destination at a particular moment. It's called "getting lost."

I'll take a wrong turn or deliberately disobey the directions given me by the ever-faithful, do-no-evil Google maps. Then I'm in the midst of suburbia. (It's the most fun to lose oneself in suburbia.) The game, now, is to see if I can get out without backtracking.

I discovered this park randomly by taking a right off a gas station on El Camino instead of the left I needed to get back to campus. Turns out it's connected to Gunn, which I did not know at the time. I was so thoroughly lost, I couldn't figure out where I was relative to a couple landmarks. It's a beautiful park, a beautiful walk, and I may leave it that way in my memories--frozen in December.

But discoveries like that are rare, occasional, coincidental... sometimes more spectacular things happen: getting truly lost. Before it was just a game, a game to see how good my internal compass is, and a game to see if man can still beat the GPS machine (it can't, by the way, but it's always fun to try).

The first thought through my mind that comes with the adrenaline of realizing that I am truly lost is, "How did I get here?" Instinctively, I fault myself for taking a daring turn. Sure, it's easy to take that detour off the well-trodden trail--when you're on foot. It's a different story when you're in a car, navigating the fractal suburbia. This house is that house's doppleganger. It's probably more like trail-blazing in the deep forest.

"How did I get here?" That's always the first thought. The next thought presents itself as a choice. Do I enjoy the fact that I no longer know where I am and push on towards the next exciting discovery, perhaps waiting around the proverbial "river bend"? (Cue Pocahontas music.) Or do I panic, call for help, and try to scramble on out of the forest?

"Hey, are you near a computer?"
"Yeah, why?"
"Okay. Can you look up directions back to Stanford from x street and y street?"

It's become kind of a code. "Are you near a computer?"--a euphemism for, "I'm lost, bail me out." I usually make this call when the sun starts to set and all the streets are uniformly lit in their incandescent glory.

Still, the times that I have chosen to press forward, before the light fades, sometimes I emerge unscathed. Sometimes I'm fed up with the twists and turns. And sometimes I find something new and enjoyable.

At the end of the day, though, it is a choice to call for help or to continue exploring. Often, the difference between beauty found and beauty lost is settled by patience and fuel in the tank.

Bear with the rocket analogy--because I'm a nerd--but every rocket launch happens in stages. Each stage is designed to propel the next higher up, until, finally, the payload makes it to orbit. Most stages involve jettisoning some dead weight: when you use up the fuel in stage 1, you get rid of the booster so the next stage can carry itself higher up.

It's part of the design.

While I'm sure rocket scientists, geeks, and lab technicians did not have "life" in mind when they considered how they were going to lift "things" into space, maybe they've come up with an unwittingly genius analogy for growth and maturity.

Your view expands as you get farther into space; your point or origin suddenly seems to fall into place--just another speck on the planet, just another planet in the solar system, just another solar system in this universe.... What once seemed significant--the clean room, the launch pad, the Countdown--it's all left behind. There are new beauties to behold: the majesty of Mars, the rocks of the Belt, the rings of Saturn. And if you kept going, you'd find newer and newer things. If the Vitruvian Man aboard the Voyager could share his journey, maybe he'd speak of wonders we'd not comprehend.

But that first part--getting into space--is often the hardest. Gravity is a cruel mistress (among the many figurative mistresses one can have!). 9.8 meters per second squared of resistance; 9.8 meters per second squared of "I don't want" and "If only's" and "I wish." 32 feet per second squared of backsliding, arrogance, and selfishness. And maybe that's why life happens in stages, with each stage showing how far we've come and revealing how much more we have to go. Already I've made it to the apex of this leg of the journey, but I'm not yet beyond gravity--not just yet.

If only I could fly.