A Map is Not a Territory
 They told me you had been to her,
And mentioned me to him:
She gave me a good character,
But said I could not swim.
He sent them word I had not gone
(We know it to be true):
If she should push the matter on,
What would become of you?
I gave her one; they gave him two,
You gave us three or more;
They all returned from him to you,
Though they were mine before.
Lewis Carroll.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Have you ever considered the question of what most people think about
their lives? How do they see them? About fifty years ago a famous Polish philosopher and
psychiatrist Y. Kosinski wrote a wonderful phrase that is often quoted in various sources.
He said, “A map is not a territory”. Probably, you will ask me what this means? The
explanation is that we as human beings cannot objectively feel the world “as it is”.
We cannot understand the whole picture. We just see a small piece, a light shadow of a
real world. You cannot escape from it, it is determined by your physiological and genetic
limits, background, education, environment and many other things. Moreover, you add one
thing to another. So as you live, you just build your own map of the world. The thing is
to realize that it is only a map.
For many people life is simple and quite understandable. For a believer
it can be compressed into the Ten Commandments and a pocket Bible on the shelf; for a
businessman it is the absolute value of money and a new Porsche by next month. Probably,
for most of us it is just a sudden whim, a negative experience and the brute received from
far ancestry. You act on the stage of your own theatre, build your scenery and think that
is the only way to exist, though, in truth, the possibilities are numerous. That is a
wonderful metaphor which came from Shakespeare! Actually, we have numerous theatres,
numerous scenes and numerous ways to act. You cannot count all the options you had even
for the previous minute. So what can we say about our whole life? The world you see is
determined by the way you look at it. Change yourself and the “world” will change by
itself. This is widely known, and reminds me of some advertising logo of an American
optimism and faith. But few people use it in practice, and I am not an exception. It is
much easier to state that than to follow.
A person is born, lives and dies. In addition, during his short life,
he constantly builds a brick wall that separates him from the real world and others.
Isn’t it a wall of our conceit and narrow-mindedness? However, you cannot say whether
these are good people or evil. It’s just that everyone has their own direction. The one
that is only right, of course. That is the “world” limited by the size of your skull.
People are said to become wiser with age. Sometimes it is true and
sometimes it is not. I think that you can meet a wise man among the old as often as among
the young. It is false that with old age wisdom has come and useless illusions have
disappeared. In fact a person has just not understood anything. Why not trust anyone if
you were deceived? Why should I avoid women if you had troubles with them? That is why I
do not really talk to adults. Because a monologue is a preferred form of expressing your
ideas in such talks. You think that if I keep silence I don’t have anything to say, that
I do not have any ideas. But it isn’t true.
Listen to what your parents, teachers, adults say; but do not overrate
it. Think for yourself. Do not rely on authorities, remember that what they describe as
life is only a map and keep these limits in mind. Life is too strange and too complex, and
time flies too fast to be one hundred percent sure of anything...
By Marcel Salikhov,
5th year student, MIET
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