Do you know what cartography is?

It’s the science or practice of drawing maps.

Some of the earliest maps of the United States were drawn by the famous exploders Lewis and Clark. President Thomas Jefferson commissioned them in 1804 to map the newly acquired western half of the North American continent.

How useful do you think those maps would be today?

There might be a handful of landmarks such as rivers or perhaps a large mountain range that still exists, but for the most part the landscape would look totally different.

Maps have to continuously updated, especially in rapidly changing environments. Sometimes a map that is only a few years old can be outdated.

What about maps that seem to misrepresent?

The most popular world map used today is the Mercator map. The way this map is presented leads you to believe that the sizes of Europe and North America are larger than they are and “visually speaking, Canada and Russia appear to take up approximately 25% of the Earth’s landmass, when in reality they occupy a mere 5%.”

So, what if the map you’re using to guide your life is outdated or even worse misrepresents the truth?

What if you have just blindly adopted practices and patterns of thinking without updating them for the environment and time you’re living in?

Learn to question the maps you’ve been given and taught. Don’t fall for the ‘it’s always been this way.’ And remember, even when you have an up-to-date map that all it does it give you the layout of the land. It doesn’t show you all the impediments you might encounter on your own personal journey and it doesn’t teach you how to handle them. For that you’ll have to create your own map.

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