The Compass
Unfortunately this is something you don’t realize until you get older, and it is one of the things you, or specifically I, wish someone had explained at the point in my life where it could have been useful. It would have prevented wasted time.
There are no roadmaps in life. Only compasses.
A roadmap conjures images of highways and byways. Of interchanges, connecting tunnels, bridges, and yes, toll booths. (There is no free ride on the road of life.) You can sit down before you start your vehicle and plan your route. Maybe you’ll take The 90 to The 81, and then head south to connect to The 380? What if, however, you had no map? You only knew you wanted to travel, say, southwest, and you only had a compass? By using the compass you could, conceivably, travel in a southwest direction, but there would be a lot of stopping, starting, attempts to get a geographical orientation, and back tracking on unfamiliar roads until you returned to the southwest course you desired?
That’s true in life as well.
Recently I had a conversation with a frustrated friend, a parent, about their son attempting to find their way. I get it. I get the frustration. Being a parent inherently means you have a head start, and there is the ability to look in the rear-view mirror at the composite landscape and have a better understanding of the roads to be taken and avoided. The rough roads; the potholes. Other travelers tempting to lure you down the avenues of their own mistakes because misery loves company. Perhaps even more than they want to admit, parents don’t want their offspring to veer off onto some of the [same] paths they took.
I explained all of this to my friend. There is no map to life, only a compass, and the best anyone can do, young or old, is to navigate the best we can. Offer advice when asked, weigh the advice we are given, but never, ever, touch a steering wheel that doesn’t belong to us. We are each given our own wheel in life, and it’s built for one person. Two people on a steering wheel is fraught with danger. At best it’ll have the unintended consequences of driving off the shoulder for a period before getting back on solid pavement. At worst it could mean driving over a cliff from where there’s no return, but those are the extremes.
I explained to my friend that I’m not just waxing philosophically. I’m no different than anyone else. I had my starts and stops before I became the person I am today. I don’t have any regrets – I continually move forward. It’s how I’m built. However, if I do have one wish, it would have been that someone would have told me this my freshman year of college. There is no map – only a compass. It manifests a different image. One (hopefully) that puts everything into a better perspective. There is a lot of unjustified self-confidence and arrogance at that age. Much of it is a defense mechanism against insecurity. People are unique and each manage insecurities differently. Make no mistake life is overwhelming that first year of college. Looking back I can see that now. The tendency is to look too far ahead at people a lot closer to their destination than you are, and there can be a level of bewilderment. How am I ever going to do this? To proceed from a false assumption that everyone had this turn by turn directional GPS roadmap that told them exactly how to get there. They didn’t. They were, are, exactly like the rest of us. They only had a compass, and some of them didn’t even have a destination when they started out. Or they had to change their destination en route. Very few people know their exact destination when they start off on their road. Those that do God Bless them – you are one of the select few. There are far more people like the rest of us that kind of have an idea we want to travel southwest, but we’re not entirely sure about that either. The trick, I told my friend, is to keep a watchful eye on those both surrounding you and those within eyesight up the road. If they’re going taking a turnpike to connect to an adjacent highway, and it is one you’re interested in, there is no harm in following suit. Time will tell if it is the correct road to stay on or if, perhaps, you need to get off at the next exit and look at the compass again. You are in command of the steering wheel and no one else.
I learned that the hard way. Even though the intentions might have been good I gave up my wheel briefly. Mainly because I was struggling with a sense of direction. That was on me. I thought I had needed a destination when I embarked on my journey. Mainly because everyone (usually well-meaning relatives) inadvertently asks what is your destination out of friendly curiosity, and nobody wants to say I don’t have one out of fear of looking stupid. No one at any age likes to appear stupid. So we invent some destination to provide an answer to them and to lie to ourselves that we have one, and it only leads to a lot of wasted time driving around and back tracking on roads we maybe shouldn’t have gone down. Maturity is knowing there’s no shame in not knowing your destination. Only the direction is important. Once there’s a direction then sometimes the destination becomes clear once you’ve reached the horizon, and then you can glance at the compass, get your bearings, and then have a better idea as the journey continues.
The other part to keep in mind, that I told my friend, the road trip never really ends until we’re in the ground. We are always playing the part of cartographer and making our way in a direction we don’t necessarily know where it will lead.[1] Sometimes the direction leads to a destination, and sometimes it’s about the journey itself. The individual needs to know which. A destination might be finding a job, but to be good at interviewing for the job you want you need practice; that means it’s about gaining experience through the journey (or direction).
I told my friend that really I’m in no position to give parental advice never being one myself. I can only offer up my own experiences and the roads I’ve taken. Again I have no regrets – mainly because I plead ignorance to not understanding the concept that I had a compass not a map. It was foolish of me at that age to think everyone around me had maps, that something was being withheld from me and I’m standing here with this stupid compass. The compass was/is not stupid. It’s the same one we’re all issued with. Yeah, I wish I knew that back then, but it doesn’t change the now. I did reach my destination – I just lost some time on taking a few wrong turns. However, they’re not any greater number than anyone else. So I don’t lose sleep at night. He shouldn’t either. Take comfort in that his son is using his compass even though the progress maybe isn’t at a level he would prefer. The most difficult thing for a parent is struggling with the notion that after high school it’s not your wheel anymore. Each of your children have their own, and it’s best to let go and let them steer. There’s only room for one pair of hands.
“It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.” – Winston Churchill
This blog is an excellent example. I created it mainly because I wanted to write more and I to learn more about blog content managers.