Cartographies

La Voz de Galicia – January 21, 2022 →

Cristina PatoToday, I thought about how life would be if someone gave us a map to navigate it. If at birth, in addition to a certificate, someone would offer us some kind of orientation about how to trace the routes that would lead to a fulfilling life. I also thought about how interesting it would be to be able to use that map to get lost in it, and to devise new roads that would lead us through paths that we don’t even imagine.

But, in some way, we all are born with a map in life, but it is a map we don’t choose. It is a map created around us, by way of the expectations of the reality into which we are born or grow up in. A map we are not always able to change because circumstances make it impossible, or a map that we do not always dare to rip up in order to design our own itinerary.

Perhaps it would be good to imagine a life in which all of us can be the cartographers of our lives, where it is possible to think up to the point you wish to reach and by what means, and that, in addition, you can have the hope of being able to achieve it. Because perhaps it is here where things go awry. During these uncertain times, any of the paths we trace to arrive where we think we want to go are going to be altered by the precariousness of the present moment, and then we only have two options: come up with a new goal or look for another way to reach it. Because the third possible option, to abandon it, would lead us nowhere, and in this imaginary vital map, one has to remember that life requires constant navigation.

But it is also important to not forget that, as T.S. Eliot wrote, when we arrive where we believe we want to be, we should design a new map so as to never stop learning to navigate life…

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