What is on our maps? Navigating life, uncertainty and finding our wayWhat do we need to navigate life and uncertainty?

Whenever I am travelling with my partner they always navigate with compass directions. 

While I still often don’t know which way we therefore need to go (that may say more about my own sense of direction), it means that, unlike me, who is reliant on map apps, she is able to look up, navigate and reorient. It may not lead to the most direct route but it results in reaching the intended destination. 

In short, her method for navigating an unknown route is far more adaptable than my own, which relies on something or someone to tell me the right route. 

Navigational metaphors are abundant, for good reason. 

We are all, in our own way, finding our way through each day, each moment, through life. We navigate situations, we avoid certain scenarios, we seek direction.

If we are always navigating life, how are we equipping ourselves to best navigate life?

What is on our map?

Life is an unknown journey, so how do we even begin to chart a course? 

Maps, have been at the heart of navigation for much of human history.

While every moment is uncertain, we will have developed our own map for navigating that uncertainty, even if we have made this map unconsciously. 

So what is already on our map? 

If we consider a map it starts with what we do know, from experience and from what we are taught, and where we are told is and isn’t a good place to go. 

From the map we have developed, what are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ directions? 

What parts of the map have we yet to explore? 

Which parts do we know well? 

Which parts do we avoid? 

What is our map for? 

Is it a treasure map with a clear end point? 

Do we know where we want to get to on the map? 

What does our map cover? For example is it wide and big and broad like a world map or like a map of a town specific and detailed and smaller scale? 

Now we have started thinking about our map, what would it be good for? What would we like it to have? What is it missing? 

Location vs destination

A map often guides us to where we want to get to but to do that we also have to locate ourselves.

Where are you on your map? Where do you want to be? Is where you want to be on your map? 

What do you need to get to where you want to be? 

What will take us beyond the map?

A map is never wholly accurate, it is symbolic, a reference point, and sometimes out of date. What else gives us a sense of direction, of where to go? 

If we consider other navigational tools what are our equivalents?

What is our compass? 

What are our stars? 

What are the markers? Our milestones or landmarks? 

What and who else can guide you? 

What if there is no direction?

Writing to a friend in what he called his Monumental Letter, the writer Hunter S Thompson answering his friend Hume’s request for advice on what to do with his life, Thompson made the distinction between swimming towards a destination and floating, asking his friend: ‘But why not float if you have no goal?’

The idea of floating doesn’t suggest we are being idle, for we are always moving and keeping ourselves a float, but emphasises that to float should be as valid a choice as to pursue a direction and destination. Again: ‘It is unquestionably better to enjoy the floating than to swim in uncertainty.’

For Thomspon what was more important is that we consciously choose if we are floating or swimming in a chosen direction or for a clear destination.

When it comes to a map of your life, do you have a destination to travel towards (to swim to) or do you choose to stay where you are (to float)?

Lost or finding our way: Our territory to chart, our maps to make, all our world to explore? 

At the opening of this letter Thomspon warned his friend that ‘to point with a trembling finger in the RIGHT direction is something only a fool would take upon himself.’

Here Thompson makes a powerful point. Only we can know the right direction (which may at times be to simply float). Part of life is to chart our course, navigate our world. 

While this reads like lonely business it is all our experience: to navigate life, to find our right direction. So we can also take assurance in that fact, we are and will always be finding our way in an ever changing world, and we, as humans, have been doing this for much of our history. 

What can we already know from our and everyone’s experience that will help us navigate our life? 

What is on your map? 

What lies beyond your map? 

Who may have been there before you?

If you could explore beyond your map where would you love to go?

What will guide you in the unknown?