Finding Your Way

Oh, to have a path well-trodden

There was a conversation about maps, land navigation, and map-making that sparked this. It’s funny, the directions mental sparks can fly in. Off at all angles, and suddenly you’re not sure how you got here, and hopefully you know where you are. I mean, you’re inside your own head, right? Surely you can find your way home from there.

Talking to others is a good way to evaluate your mental map and check to see if it still fits the terrain. A different conversation brought up the whole “I’m in my late forties and still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up!” which I suspect had I asked my grandmother when she briefly visited recently I’d get the same reaction from her, in her late eighties. We do change, and grow, and learn, so the maps we drew for ourselves when we were in our late teens are no longer valid from 18, to 38, to 48… and beyond. Thar be dragons, in the passing stream of life. Sometimes they collide with you, knocking you off course. Other times, they magically make a mountain become a molehill, when your perspective changes.

This changing perspective can be brought about by distance, as well, in terms of time. As I have grown older, and further each day from my youthful dreams and goals, I have seen them become impossible to reach. There comes a time when you must decide to face forward, into the future, instead of running backwards ever looking at what you had done, or had not and tripping over regrets. I’m not saying to rip off the rose-colored glasses and look at a grim reality. I don’t actually think that is necessary or helpful. I do think that some paths are only open to the young, for very good reasons. Which does not mean that there are no goals and excitements left to the middle-aged and older. Simply that things have changed, your terrain is no longer the soaring peak ascents but now, the broader, steadier flow of a river of past accomplishments that carry you along it’s course.

X marks the spot. Right here, today, in this moment, it is where you are. Do you know, on the map of your mental terrain, where that is? Do you know where you want to be, and how to get there from here? If so, you’ve got one up on me. I was thinking about this, over the last week or so. I have done many exercises with map and compass (although not since I was a younger woman). If you are making a map, what is your compass for this world? Do you have a magnetic north? A polestar to guide your navigation, perhaps? If you fix on that, then you can begin to feel your way around and determine the bigger picture. It will take time, if you don’t want it to resemble the blind men with the elephant. You will have to determine how to illumine your inner thoughts to yourself, if you don’t want to grope in the dark and grow frustrated, giving up on it.

What good is this exercise? For me, I intend to take it on as a way to see where and what I have changed in the last decade, since I began to truly heal. There are still scars, and chasms of wounds that will likely never close. I fall into those in my dreams these days. I have learned, most of the time, how to skirt around them in my waking hours. Still, though, those do not fill up my life, which is largely calm and peaceful. I have routines which aid me in being super-productive, more than I could be without careful adherence to time management and rejection of distractions. I have found that I must schedule in rest, I will become ill if I drive myself to exhaustion, so I husband my time carefully. Everyone will be different.

I’m at a shift with my phase of life, where my body has made it clear that I’ve changed, and will change. I am learning what this means in terms of stamina and physical conditioning, and I am challenging it in some ways, refusing to allow it to simply overtake me and make me, well, rounder. Physical, as well as mental exercise, must be deployed while you are map-making! What you can do, is going to be different than what you could do. Feel out your boundaries, and then see if you can push them outward.

This map is not a static thing even at a singular point in your life. You can choose to change it, deliberately and carefully. However, before you can do that, you must know what the map looks like. Choose a navigation point, and begin to investigate your capacity, your skills, your inmost beliefs, your ability to do work. These, and much more, form the terrain of your mind. No one else can do this, it’s work you can only do for yourself.

When you’ve begun, you’ll know how to find yourself. And then, you’ll know the way home. Which, you realize, is right where you were when you felt lost.