When Lost, Sit Still: Why Stillness Might Be the Most Courageous Movement You Make

By Tyler Buckhout, LICSW

There’s an old maxim that’s been echoing through my work with clients lately—and in my own heart too:
When lost, sit still.

It’s a phrase that sounds deceptively simple. Ancient, even. But it holds a radical challenge for anyone living in a culture that worships motion, progress, and certainty.

I’ve reached a point in my life where the practical worries—paychecks, tolls, parking tickets—feel small, even mundane. These once-heavy anxieties now serve as quiet reminders of how far I’ve come. And yet, in their smallness, I find myself facing a bigger, stranger silence:

What now?

The hum of purpose, once sharp and motivating, has faded into the background—a soft static, like the fuzz on an old TV screen. And when it roars back, it’s overwhelming, like standing too close to an airplane as it lifts off.

I’m not alone in this. I see it in people across ages and lives: 19, 27, 31, 48. The seeker in all of us.
So what do we do when we find ourselves in the woods—metaphorical or otherwise—without a map?

Waiting in the Woods

The ancient advice says: wait.
But waiting assumes rescue. Embedded in that wisdom is the belief that someone—or something—will come find us.

For those of us who resist being rescued, who have spent our lives learning self-reliance, the lesson changes:
To sit still becomes not an act of passivity, but of courage.

How do we turn inward when we are lost?
What tools do we possess to face the darkness—our own fear, confusion, longing—without fleeing?

For those who define themselves through others—a partner, a twin, a family role, a trauma—the forest can feel unbearable. Both the darkness and the self feel like unreliable companions.

And yet, something sacred happens in therapy: two people sit together in that forest.
The healer and the healed, taking turns holding the lantern.
Each uncertain which one of them is leading.

That is the quiet miracle of presence.
Even in the dark, light is made.

We are all walking each other home, as the saying goes.

The Wanderer Archetype

I’ve been many things in my life—therapist, supervisor, farmer, soldier, bodybuilder, seeker, rebel, poet, pilgrim. Each role, in its own way, has been a myth—a story I’ve lived into.

Perhaps this is where religion and philosophy both begin: with the wanderer.
Jesus from the desert. Odin, cloaked and windblown.
Each begins alone, searching.

The wanderer embodies mystery. Both becoming and being. Unknown and known.

Years ago, I walked the Camino de Santiago. My pilgrimage wasn’t religious in the traditional sense but in an older, human one—the instinct to move, to walk simply because walking feels like remembering something ancient.

We are the only species, as far as we know, that questions its own existence.
We tell stories not just to survive, but to understand.
And maybe that’s the point: the wandering is the understanding.

Stillness as Movement

When lost, sitting still doesn’t mean stopping.
It means shifting the kind of movement we make.

Stillness can be its own pilgrimage—an inward step rather than an outward one.

Because when we move without awareness, we lose ourselves.
When we become too still, we stop existing.
Living means holding both truths at once: stillness and motion, wandering and resting, seeking and being found.

Maybe that’s what I’ve been trying to do all along with my writing and my work—to love existence enough to wrestle with it. To rebel by refusing to numb out.

Each sentence, each conversation, each act of noticing is a declaration:
I am here.
I am still walking.
Even when sitting still.

The Paradox of Being

To be human is to be in paradox—restless and rooted, becoming and being.
And when we stop running from that contradiction, we start to live inside it.

So when lost—sit.
But remember that sitting is still a form of walking.

The path continues beneath you, even if unseen.
And maybe, just maybe, that’s all we’ve ever needed to remember.

Tyler Buckhout, LICSW, is a psychotherapist and clinical supervisor based in Boston and the founder of Real Therapy, a group practice dedicated to helping individuals and clinicians rediscover meaning through authenticity, connection, and self-inquiry.