Do you think about the road or the destination when you travel?
When I drive in the United States I see signage that emphasizes the road or highway that I am on. There are many street names and only occasional signs noting that this town is this far or that town is that far.
But when I drove in the Netherlands and Belgium during a visit in 2006 I saw signage that emphasized the many different places I could go from where I was. The street I was on or turning onto was rarely mentioned.
I spent most of the first two days of my trip getting lost.
Even though I had a map I had to shift the way that I perceived the map. I learned to consider the places the roads I wanted were headed towards and the shapes of the route on the landscape without being too concerned over the name of an individual road.
The last three days of the week-long trip I didn’t get lost at all.
I remembered this process of shifting my perception while writing my previous post. This one was gradual instead of a jump. Even after I realized that my thinking and the environment were diverging and identified the difference, it still took time to effectively adjust my thinking.
