The Nature of Reality
MapQuest was a technological marvel. In the early days of the internet you would. . .
- Visit mapquest.com,
- Enter your departure address,
- Enter your destination address,
- Print the turn-by-turn instructions produced by the system,
- Take your printed directions and find your way to your destination following the directions.
Remarkable as MapQuest was, its limitation was clear: it was on paper.
If you took a wrong turn or were just really bad at following directions, you could still get hopelessly lost; perhaps even worse off than you would have been following your Uncle Steve’s verbal directions scrawled hastily on a napkin.
The functional limitations of MapQuest in its early years are a good parallel to life. We make plans — sometimes sketching them out in painstaking detail — only to be derailed by the unforeseeable: changes in employment opportunities, health, or family circumstances.
Alan Watts offered a revision on the tired refrain “life is what happens when you’re making other plans” when he said:
They fail to live because they are always preparing to live.
