Integrate!

© Can Stock Photo / edharcanstock It might be hard to remember the last time you looked at a physical map.  Maybe you were on vacation, and you pulled a map out of a guide book or you picked up one of the tourist maps you get at hotel desks or information centres. The thing about a paper map is that it has edges. Your map program on your phone will just move the edges and re-centre so you are back in the centre of the picture. Life is more like the paper map. Sometimes we get to the edge, and we have to make choices about what to do next. Essentially we have only 3 choices: turn around and go back; go forward without a map or go looking for another map. Sometime between 40 and 60, maybe several times, you will come to the edge of your map. It can happen earlier or later, but it will certainly happen that in the middle of your life, you will run out of map. Your plans will or will not have worked out, and you'll find that there is no clear route from where you are to where y...

©CanStockPhoto/dbrus January ended, and now you can look back at your plans for 2019 and notice where you are on track and where the track is under 4 feet of snow. Maps work as long as the roads are clear and you know where you are and where you want to go. Most of the time, it's a good idea to get your bearings before you try to use a map (much less make one). But people are naturally impatient, especially as a new year begins. We think we need a plan. What we need is a compass. A compass can only do one thing: it can show you where true north is in relation to where you are now. With that one piece of information, you can move in any direction with confidence. You just need to know where you are in relation to one defining landmark. What's your true north? I think it's something like wellness, or a life well-lived. If you don't know where you are in relation to that, it's hard to make good choices about how to get there or about the price of going somewh...