Heroes Not Zombies

I think this old photo of moss on a log looks a bit like either a satellite photo of part of the Earth, or the “satellite” view on Google maps.

Which brought that old phrase to mind – “The map is not the territory”.

Are you familiar with that saying? It’s used a lot in NLP circles but I first came across it in the writings of the General Semanticists who wrote their books decades before NLP was invented.

It’s designed to remind us that reality and our representations of reality are not the same. Our left cerebral hemisphere works this way all the time – it “re-presents” the information it receives. Our frontal lobes are also where we make maps – as Dan Seigel wrote, they are where we make a “me map”, a “you map” and a “we map”.

Maps are great. I love them. They can help you explore unknown territory and help make it become familiar. But they are an invention.

It’s too easy to slip into autopilot and navigate our every day using our pre-formed maps (either ones we invented earlier, or the ones given to us by others). But when we slow down, become deliberately aware, then we find the territory is richer, more complex, more dynamically changing, than any of the maps led us to believe.