When we drove into town on that evening in early August 2023, it was the first time back for me in just about twenty years, to the city where I had spent the majority of my childhood. During the following few days, we explored the area by car and on foot and I was able to revisit once very familiar neighborhoods and introduce my wife and daughter (11) to them. It was a mix of nostalgia and discovery, it was very nice.
Through it all though I could not shake a feeling of strange disorientation. I was generally able to find my way around pretty well. However, I found my surroundings both very familiar and almost unrecognizable. Of course, it had been years, so with that much time passed, my memories had faded a bit. It was more than that though.
It felt like I was working with a mental map that used to be very accurate. I still recognized a lot of the lines (streets) and their labels. However, the areas in between had changed in varying degrees – subtle here, entirely there. Houses were gone or changed, in color or shape, new buildings added, business come or gone.
We all use maps. They are not just generally useful; they are a practical necessity for navigating the world. Maps are always, necessarily, lossy. They simplify and abstract to focus on specific aspects, which means other information gets lost. It can be difficult to see what is missing, but your focus highlights what you ignore.
We may have explicitly drawn maps or models that we can hold in our hands and look at. When we think about the world or navigating situations, we rely on the maps that exist in our heads. They are fundamental to our thinking and reasoning. This generally serves us well.
Especially, when a map has been working well for us though, it is easy to form an attachment and even to implicitly confuse the map for the reality it is about. The model of course, is not what it is modelling; the map is not its territory.
There are a times when we notice that things have gotten out of sync. That is what I experienced during the trip last summer.
Drastic changes are easier to see. A pandemic that fundamentally alters daily life and free movement of people. A software that has come relied upon to keep information resources secure and available instead causes a massive, global system outage. A political campaign that had been running on a strategy aimed at competing against an eighty-year old white man, suddenly facing the reality of instead competing against a twenty year younger Black woman instead. Maps need updating.
When we notice a substantial discrepancy, we experience variations of alarm or surprise – good or bad – it is unsettling, because we find ourselves sensing that reality does not match our existing view of it. That may not be pleasant experience, but it is usually much better than not noticing the discrepancy at all — or until it is too late.
Maps exist relative to the reality they intend to describe. If the former is outdated, then the later has likely changed too much.
Stay open to surprise.
😲