Let the Destination Find You

I’m not complaining, I actually love it, but I have discovered that blogging can be a navigational nightmare. I usually start with a recent experience, a person I encounter, or a book that I am reading and I create a mind map. Have you heard of mind maps? I get excited just thinking about it.

Mind maps were popularized by Tony Buzan, a British television personality. Leave it to the Brits. A mind map is a way to visually organize information.

So I start with the main idea and then draw branches that extend the idea or embed it with new meaning. For example, I took the idea of baptism, linked with the dress, made the past present, touch on the concept of forgiveness, all leading to the continuity of life. You get the idea. Every experience or encounter becomes part of a repertoire of stories, filed away in my subconscious, but they also become part of my identity. (Mom that is not my tattoo).

And of course, they link up with old files, antidotes, associations, all stored in the vast caverns of the mind. Today I started with the idea of maps. Don’t you just love the depth of this word? It is often associated with travel, new destinations, and maybe even a navigator. I like to navigate my own adventures but it is not really a skill set of mine. I usually end up lost. (We’ll explore that later) Inaccessible parts of the world are mapped from the air. Inaccessible parts…that is so intriguing. You can even visually map a person’s face.

Seth Godin says,

Here’s the truth you have to wrestle with: the reason that art (writing, engaging, leading, all of it) is valuable is precisely why I can’t tell you how to do it. If there were a map, there’d be no art, because art is the act of navigating without a map. Don’t you hate that? I love that there’s no map.

I think it is interesting how accessible maps have become, every car has a navigational system, google maps on our phones and various G.P.S. devices. (Global positioning systems) Maps take all the risk out of the journey. We can find our way home with the touch of a button, but I think what Seth Godin advises, is to put the maps away and go get lost. Set out on a new adventure and let the destination find you. See where the road takes you, I suppose that is the purpose of life, and that is why I blog.

Hey, maybe we’ll run into each other?

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Originally published on Living in the Gap

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Photo credit: Shutterstock ID 762457870