Connect With Maps

Have you ever had a life map goal so entrenched in your expectations that you can’t or won’t veer from it? But then the unexpected happens and suddenly your choices are turned upside down.

In the movie Shag, four friends have their lives mapped out for them—literally and figuratively. With one exception they are about to settle into or accept the social, cultural expectations of their world and what others expect from them. But not without one last burst of freedom, one weekend to be who they think they are, and in those few days discover a new life map.

One young socialite is so fixated on her upcoming wedding that her best friends lie to her about their destination. Only when they turn onto a different highway does she realize they are heading for a beach to party. She had only agreed to the weekend if the activities had fit an acceptable decorum. She resists as much as possible but is pulled into the lure of a different road. Away from the rules she finds the shell she has molded for herself breaking into pieces.

Journal Prompt:

Choose some categories of lifestyle that are, or were, in your heroine’s high school world. Is it a private school atmosphere or a rural school, high school with 4,000 students or one with 400?

What are the expectations of their family and community towards them, that they will follow into trade jobs, marry, stay status quo or go off the grid? Choose four from different economic, or other status levels, and write up a sketch of their expected day responsibilities ahead of them.

Share: Did your heroine follow the status quo or choose a different journey? What happened?

Maps

“That said perhaps the movie reflects in its rawest form what it means to be human: we carry the disjointed memories of our life (often carried in pictorial form) with the slim thread of narrative (or understanding) that barely makes sense of it all. I find the movie more compelling when viewed through this lens but no more satisfying.” Mary Loebig Giles

This thought helps me understand better my difficulty connecting emotionally with the movie Tree of Life.  Map-making into our own personal history is disjointed enough and difficult to connect, let alone transfer comprehension to another.

Even when we connect with a similar experience the process of experiencing it and moving past it will be unique. Why does one child survive a harsh upbringing with compassion and generosity and another with rage and even more brutality? Perhaps even from within the same family.

Empathy helps us to share and yet there is still a distinct difference. We draw the maps, we name the local territory, and we highlight the routes taken. Yet we color code with different symbols, danger points, or rest stops.

And the surface pristine map we draw for the world to see may bear no reality to the chasms and ravines underneath silently waiting for the tremor that will split it wide open. Emotional map making needs a light touch and winds of mercy in order to communicate. It requires courage.

Journal Prompt:

            The movie focused on one character trying to map one particular stage of his journey with specific micro memories—often out of sequence—and without explanation.

            Take one stage of either your life or your character’s, say as a young teenager or new parent or first time driver, and make a visual word map as if you were placing photographs on a sheet of paper. Then connect them with colored pens to reflect routes and the corresponding emotions.

Share: Did one particular color or situation rise to the surface? Did it surprise you?

Maps

Another powerful metaphor that the clocks portray in the movie Hugo is as a hub or center from which their wheels turn like a bicycle with spokes over and over. The core radiates out into paths or roadmaps of direction. As Hugo gazes out the windows of his tower he sees roads light up in multiple avenues and yet all from the same starting point. His special view is towards the Eiffel Tower, another grand example of technology woven together, still considered a new landmark in 1931 and not fully approved yet by all Parisians.

In an attempt to share his longing for a place to belong, Hugo shows his friend Isabelle this favorite view, high in the clock tower, and explains that he’d imagine the whole world was one big machine. “Machines never come with any extra parts you know. They always come with the exact amount they need. So I figured if the entire world was one big machine, I couldn’t be an extra part. I had to be here for a reason. And that means you have to be here for a reason too.”

As he wrestles to understand the eternal desire for purpose and a reason for being, he looks to what he has already understood through the creativity and workmanship of clock making. As young as he is he takes the tools he knows to search out his answers. The clocks themselves become his roadmap towards a heart direction.

Proverbs 4:23 says,“Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it springs the issues of life.”

Journal Prompt:

Has your character always had a sense of belonging, or a sense of searching? Suppose Hugo spoke these words to her as a young teenager. How would she have responded then? How would she respond now in the circumstances she is in?

Maps

Have you ever had a day that you would’ve liked to erase and have as a do-over? Somewhere it took control and seemingly forced you along its path, with no exit signs. How can we find our way back to a new road on a fresh map?

Sometimes it seems as if our life maps are set in cement and we must follow the course we set in motion, regardless of the consequences to our emotional, physical or spiritual health. Commitment is good. Perseverance is good. But what happens when we are so driven by agendas or choices that our route has become rigid to the point of harmful and has also left common sense behind? Or worse, our decisions have propelled us into a skewered perspective and twists life out of focus.

In the Doctor Who series version of A Christmas Carol, the doctor cannot budge the hard-hearted Kazran Sardick to save a space liner. Kazran’s map of bitterness has set his heart on a trajectory that he refuses to change. So The Doctor adds another set of life experiences showing new positive memories alongside the stony ones the old man harbors. Kazran remains sarcastic and apparently unmoved, openly challenging The Doctor’s abilities to change his mind or stop his decision to allow the crash.

But gradually he has been affected by mercy and love and grace, and when the final moment of truth comes he has changed so dramatically from himself that he is unable to reverse the controls, which will only respond to the bitter version of himself. The actions set in motion by his earlier self will not acknowledge the new. He now has a heart of truth. He must plot a new map for his life.

Journal Prompt:

Take a special memory from your protagonist’s past and present the original intent as opposite to her understanding. Do one from a positive reversal and one from a negative. What would change as a result in her current choices?

Maps

Author Dallas Willard says that “we make the decisions that determine what we will do and who we will become” through our “lifescape,” the thoughts for our will and our life.

Often our lives are moving so fast that we don’t often stop to check out this life-map to notice whose agenda we’re on. Not until there’s a major bump in the road, and even then we can be coaxed to continue on a route that is detrimental if we don’t stop and re-evaluate.

In the movie Larry Crowne, after a period of hopeful job searching, Larry realizes that he can no longer afford his home and goes to the bank to release it. However, the bank manger insists Larry sit down with a ‘free’ (exaggerated) cup of coffee to talk it over and ends with Larry still owning a home he can’t afford. He has accepted her thought position and bowed to her cheerful pressure.

However several weeks later, after studying a basic economics class at the junior college, he spends an evening going through all his papers, chooses an envelope, drops in a key and the next morning hands the package to the bank manager telling her that he will vacate the premises within thirty days. As he strides away she still coaxes him to come and have a “free” cup of coffee to re-consider.

The first encounter increased his confusion and depression. The second released him from a burden he could not carry. Although his job loss instigated the situation, Larry’s new perspective enabled him to see that he himself had made choices for the wrong reasons and then allowed others to determine his personal map. Now he was setting a new course for himself based on emotional and financial honesty.

Journal Prompt:

1. Choose a situation for your character outlining a course of action that is not beneficial to them. How does a family member, or work associate, ‘sell’ this course of action to them in order to serve themselves?

2. What knowledge will your character need to see the real “lifescape”?