The Mall Map: You Are Here
“We go looking in lots of places, we take detours - a LOT of them…”
We’ve all had the experience. You go to an unknown mall, or even one you’ve been to multiple times, looking for a particular store. Surely the Mall Directory will help, so you go in search of THAT - NOT always easy to find. You then stand in front of it taking a few seconds to get your bearings. Well that’s what the map is for anyhow! You run your finger down the long list of offerings and you find YOUR store - D4 or such. Murphy's Law perhaps, but it often happens to be in some obscure spot, a farthest corner from where you actually are. Oh, and by the way, you need to figure out precisely where you are in the first place! You see the star and the YOU ARE HERE. Ahhh - we’re getting somewhere. Or maybe not. You take a glance around - there are multiple entries for the same store - Lord & Taylor Men’s - Macy’s Furnishings - not the main stores - what is this?! Then determined to set off, you just do - not exactly clear where you’re going but you can’t wait any longer. How hard could it be?
There are meandering paths, often detours into another store that suddenly you are reminded you “need” to go into. It's another department store you’ve surely exited at a different spot and must locate yet another Mall Map. Found it. Okay - take it from the top: run the index finger down the list of offerings and find your spot again. Yup - it’s still D4. Then find the reassuring YOU ARE HERE to place yourself in this subset of the Universe, take a quick scan around and set off, yet again, on the original mission.
I analogize this to other parts of our life. Like finding our True North. We go looking in lots of places, we take detours - A LOT of them - and we keep getting distracted from the path. A couple of observations here. For one, we overlooked finding the YOU ARE HERE sign. In my opinion, that’s pretty critical! How can you find the path to your desired destination when you don’t even know where you’re starting from?! Second, on this particular excursion we may be looking all around us for the markers, hoping for the illuminated path that’s easy to find, the one where there’s no mistaking. You might feel a little anxious, like you’re truly lost, but most probably you are just temporarily disoriented. Take a minute to locate yourself, place yourself on the map and get your bearings. If you’re determined to find “D4” - you will!
What is your D4? Do you have a sense of it, do you know exactly how to get there or, have you no clue? Of course there’s no wrong answer.
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