The Map in My Head

I love maps.  I do.  I love getting to see where places are, where I can go, how to get there, and imaging what it might look like.  When I was as young as 12 I was the designated navigator on car trips with my mother, the summer we drove form Minnesota to Montreal, I read the map.  I found the rest stops, hotels, and interesting little places to see.  I have had a map hanging on the way of my room since I was about the same age.  I love old maps, new maps, funny maps, and treasure maps.  After I have been to a place a map can help me remember all the little things that made that place special like that name of the street where favorite café is in Paris or the particular bend in the road from La Paz to Corrioco where the valley spreads out before you, and also a map helps me dream of all the places I still want to go!

After living in a place a little while I start to form a map in my head of that place.  When I drive I learn which roads are one way and the quickest way home; when I go for a walk or run I learn where the pretty houses are and the nice sidewalks.  This over time becomes a detailed map in my head and after awhile I don’t get lost anymore and I hardly need a paper map to get me places.  My former roommate use to call me sometimes to ask me for directions, she said I was easier to follow than a map.   It is sort of like having my personal GPS unit in my head, no batteries required.

When I finished my bachelor’s degree I imagined a certain future for myself.  Where I would go, how I would get there, a map of sorts.  Overtime that map in my head has changed turned, evolved but still with a sense of direction and purpose.  With a sense that I was moving forward I was going somewhere and I certainly wasn’t going back to where I had been.  Last year when I finished my master degree and prepared for my time in Senegal I laid out a new road map of my future where I thought it would go and what I needed to do to get there.  It was a very nice map.  It involved some exotic locals and some interesting road stops.  The truth is that coming back to the US 9 months after leaving was not on that map, yet here I am.

I will honestly say that coming back to DC the map in my head was a bit jumbled both the one that needs to get me from point a to point b when I am in my car but also the one that helps me find my way in the world as a person.  A week after coming back to DC I spent a day driving around doing various errands, meeting a friend for lunch, and generally getting a bit lost.  Yet the map I built over 3 years of living in DC before slowly retook form and even though I didn’t take the most direct route to anywhere I did make it.  The very next day at one in the morning I drove across town to take a friend to the emergency room.  It wasn’t a route that I had taken the day before or one that I had maybe ever taken exactly as I did that night.  In the car, I was without a map, I had only the knowledge that I needed to get to my friend and then to the hospital as soon as possible so all I could do was trust my instincts.  I had to trust the map in my head that it would get me to where I needed to go and it did.   

My friend has made a complete recovery and I have a renewed faith in the map of DC that is in my head.  The experience made me think that that same instinct could be applied to the other map in my head that one that is my sense of personal direction in life.  That although I might not be exactly where I thought I would be and that my map seems to have sent me on a bit of a U-turn instead of a nice meandering road near the ocean, I am not lost.  I know where I am, more importantly I know who I am.  Although I am not where I thought I would be I am still in a very good place.  I don’t know where the map in my head will take me next or when but in the meantime I will try and enjoy being where I am and accept that often the road that we didn’t plan on taking might be more beautiful than the one we traced on the map.