40 years

This was my first attempt to “draw” with my GPS route so don’t judge me too hard. It was dead cold. Wet snow covered trees, rain and barely above zero. Strangely enough extreme conditions narrowed my focus and striking analogy between orienteering and life clicked in my mind.

Firstly we have to learn absolute basics. How to navigate using roads, paths, fields, buildings. Solid features that has been set by humans. Plus compass is our best friend and saviour quite often. Translated to real life - rules and advice from our parents, other family members and teachers if you are lucky. This allows us to get from point A to B more or less safely. Might take a bit more time, but we can get around pretty well with those skills.

At some point we start to challenge status quo and decide to take some risk by jumping off the safe path. We even manage to succeed from time to time, but more often than not we end up in disaster. Aka make mistakes that take far too long to get right. This calls for new set of skills to be acquired. Putting in some effort we learn how to read more and more complex patterns and start to make our own decisions. Learning from our own mistakes is still very distant accomplishment for most of us. Translated to orienteering - we develop ability to read contours, vegetation, small features and subtle patterns that characterise different terrains. Getting most out of the map.

At some point it starts to feel like we are able to tap into magic skill called flow state. Pieces of puzzle start to fall into places. We feel like we have it all figured out and nothing can come in between us and victory. Invincible! Riding the wave thinking it will never break. Surprise! It does break and we might even miss where and when it happened. Obsessed with illusion of winning.

Why? Because we are still using a map. A map that is drawn by someone else. Someone with their own feeling for terrain, own skill set, character, taste, vision and list of maps they used to carve their own talent becoming “map makers”.

What now? At some point you have to ditch the map and go on the free ride. Navigate by feeling, barely tangible hints, even more subtle patterns. “Smell it” if you like! You can still have map in your pocket as a back up. You can still ask for advice from someone who has been there, done that, but fundamentally it has to be your own way from now on. Success requires open end loop learning. Radically new approach has to be discovered and with that new success can be achieved.

You will notice some imperfections in my 40 years route. Probably map wasn’t made according to my perception. Maybe I got carried away by an illusion for a bit too long hoping it would last a life time. Sometimes I was trying to avoid unexpected obstacles on my way. And sometimes those obstacles became the way leading to some of the greatest moments of my life to this day.

I will summarise with a quote:

“Sometimes you're flush and sometimes you're bust, and when you're up, it's never as good as it seems, and when you're down, you never think you'll be up again, but life goes on.”

40 years old Edgars.