Brain Food #862: This is the road

Sometimes, I think about roads and maps. The purpose of roads is to provide a recognisable, reliable route from one point to another. The purpose of maps is to provide a sense of place and direction; to know what roads exist so we are able to navigate our surroundings.

Sometimes we follow a road only because it is there; someone created it and put it on the map.

Sometimes, doubt will ask us to take a step back, to assess our maps, reevaluate how true and helpful they are. Whether the roads they contain are the only ones that exist.

Without maps, we would be lost. Yet, we still need our own mental framework to help us navigate the territories of life. This creates a conflict: When there is a pre-existing path that we need to take, even if it wasn’t what we had in mind, do we question it, or do we stay on it?

In her memoir, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal, Jeanette Winterson shares an anecdote from Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas’ time during World War I, a moment of having doubt and being lost:

“Gertrude and Alice are living in Paris. They are helping the Red Cross during the war. They are driving along in a two-seater Ford shipped from the States. Gertrude likes driving but she refuses to reverse. She will only go forward because she says that the whole point of the twentieth century is progress.

The other thing Gertrude will not do is read the map. Alice Toklas reads the map and Gertrude sometimes takes notice and sometimes not.

It is going dark. There are bombs exploding. Alice is losing patience. She throws down the map and shouts at Gertrude: ‘THIS IS THE WRONG ROAD.'

Gertrude drives on. She says, ‘Right or wrong, this is the road, and we are on it.”

Sometimes, there is no choice, no right or wrong, especially when it comes to our own road. The road is simply the road. The only direction is forward.

The territory itself changes. Maps get outdated, and the complexity increases as all of us have constructed our very own maps as reference points. What remains is the reality of the situation—the road we find ourselves on.

Moving forward without reading the map carries a sense of carelessness, but also of defiance, in believing in the road itself ...