In an article I am currently reading for my course on Organisational Learning, the comparison is made between looking at a map in order to appreciate a certain place versus actually finding your way, footstep after faltering footstep, over the same piece of real estate. The author’s contention is that reading a map is no substitute for an actual journey over the same ground. A map inevitably smooths over “the myriad decisions made with regard to changing conditions: diversions, parades...personal fatigue, conflicting opinions...inaccuracies on the map, and the like.” He goes on to argue that it is in the doing, the act of making knowledge real by our direct experience with it, that humans are best able to learn. It is similar to the “show don’t tell” philosophy of writing and I couldn’t agree more. However, the problem is, as with any real journey, that it takes time.
Admittedly this is not a revelation I may have come to, at least with the same depth of understanding and conviction, unless I also had the time do so. By shuffling off to the land down under, Linton and I have not only built an experience of immediate returns – such as suntans and surf lessons. We have also plunked the family down into a place far enough away from our “real” lives that we (quite unwittingly) have also made a glorious investment in the precious commodity of time. We continually find ourselves (often over a bottle of cheap Aussie plonk) thrust into highly revealing dialogues about the fresh possibilities that life has begun to offer us – conversational places we may never have discovered hunkered down at work and without the freedom of a few more ticks of time.
However, in these troubled times and with the markets spiralling into the abyss, there can be a periodic spark of self-conscious guilt that flashes to the surface, suggesting we should perhaps stop spending money and time and get back to the serious business of making money, investing sensibly, hedging our funds, buying low – selling high, and whatever else it is the self-proclaimed “experts” would have us do. However, recent events make the hypocrisy of that industry stink so much that it might be very hard to take the more "economical" approach to life seriously ever again. But I'm wasting time with that - so I'll move on.
It's amazing that even with the mere suggestion of work– and Linton has been living it with her overseas consulting work – the old evils of stress, time, money, and management – creep back into the frame, clouding what was previously so clear and cloudless. Where once there was time to wander Melbourne, now we must juggle the journeying against the reality of conference calls and report writing. It’s no wonder then that we all live such digitally dictated lives. We’re convinced, in large part due to an apparent lack of time, that it’s the only way we can remotely experience such a technically advanced world and still live the lifestyle to which we have become accustomed. Indeed, Google Earth tells us that the world is there to be mapped - but what good is that knowledge without the humanizing context of physical experience to show us how hard or great it is to actually clamber over it?
I am now rolling my eyes at the righteous and self-serving sanctimony wrapped up in my own reflections. As if we don’t all know this at some point even in the busiest times of life and of course, one need not uproot one’s entire family in order to appreciate this fact. It’s just that, for me, these things have only been allowed to surface and smack the sweeter – because today, right now, in Melbourne, I have time. The time to wander - to pitch the map, turn off the computer, walk out the door, and consider what today is capable of teaching me. It’s like the smoker who is finally able to quit for good because his heart has convinced his mind that it’s the right thing to do – it’s only when we live our convictions and pry ourselves out of our routines – that we are truly capable of real learning, real discovery, out on the open road of life. I can only hope the good people at Google will never try to sell me that.
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