Mapmakers: Let the Journey Begin!

Psychologist, Scott Peck, uses the analogy of "The Outdated Map" to describe why a lot of us struggle through life. He explains that as we grow and develop we each construct maps in our minds of how the world works: If I smile at my neighbor, I most likely will make a new friend. When I finish my homework, I get good grades.

For the most part our maps will take honest and true form and help us navigate decisions and relationships. But, sometimes negative experiences begin to form our maps with distorted perceptions of what is real: I will only get hurt if I take risks to love my friends. The only way I can find success in my career is to be flawless.

Or the landscape changes, but our map stays the same. Peck writes that we can form a "set of ways of perceiving and responding to the world which is developed in childhood and which is usually entirely appropriate to the childhood environment (indeed, often life-saving), but which is inappropriately transferred into the adult environment."

I'm starting a mini-blog series (I think it will last the rest of the week) about the maps of our lives and how they become distorted and ways that we make them right.

Luckily for me--and luckily for you--I have a friend who makes maps for a living, and has been answering my crazy questions about "geoprocessing." I think this should be fun--let the journey begin!