A fifty-year-old maple tree that hung over my deck died. For years it provided shelter from the summer sun, cooling the deck and those who sat beneath the tree. It added a certain charm to the deck, making it a comfortable place for both family and guests. Among the tens of trees on “my property” that tree was my favorite because of the quality it lent to “my deck.”
It is a commonplace assertion that humans are generally territorial. We like to call someplace “my place—my desk, my office, my yard, my deck, my house, my neighborhood, my county, my state, my country.” If aliens ever land spacecraft, we will say, “my planet.” Each of us holds mental maps of “my territories,” maps that put boundaries around places over which we feel some ownership and through which we receive some comfort. We also feel a need to protect whatever lies within the boundaries we have mapped, and we feel loss whenever part of the territory disappears or changes.
In sports, a team maps territorial boundaries that members protect against trespassers. In American football, the end zone is the object of such protection; in soccer it is the goal; in basketball it is the net, and in baseball it is home plate. But every place, regardless of the sense of ownership that a person or a team might hold, can have more than one “owner.”
What we own is important to us, but no object or place is restricted to a single mental map that defines its boundaries or areas of importance. In American football, the end zone, as I wrote above, is highly significant to a team and its fans. Yet, as the game progresses, a team protects the other end zone, and immediately everyone maps a new territory as worthy of defense. Other parts of the same field can become the centers of mental maps. For the half time band, for presentations of awards, or for acknowledgements of accomplishments, the fifty-yard line is more significant than the end zone. It’s the same field, but, given the purpose of those who use it, the map of the field differs.
So, too, do the maps of your place of business, the map of your home, and the map of your neighborhood differ from user to user. The tree at the corner of your property and next to the neighbor’s driveway becomes a welcoming signpost that beckons the neighbor to “turn here to reach home.” For the neighbor, your tree is a part of a mental map that belongs to his or her zone of comfort.
The old tree that hung over my deck has to go. I don’t have a choice. The tree surgeon is on his way to cut it down. When he finishes, the deck will change in my mental map, going from shady to sunny. I can sit in the sun and regret the change, or I can sit in the sun and welcome the change. The place I call my deck will change. The mental map of my house will change. That change is inevitable, as is the change that will occur to every neighborhood, community, office, county, state, country, or region. Nothing is permanent; no territory immutable.
Place is important to us, but attachment to it can become a boundary that limits how we adapt to change. Attachment also precludes our understanding that others can also map what we map though their maps have other purposes, other qualities, and other associated feelings.
For me, it’s time to remap the deck and to find joy in my new map.
It is a commonplace assertion that humans are generally territorial. We like to call someplace “my place—my desk, my office, my yard, my deck, my house, my neighborhood, my county, my state, my country.” If aliens ever land spacecraft, we will say, “my planet.” Each of us holds mental maps of “my territories,” maps that put boundaries around places over which we feel some ownership and through which we receive some comfort. We also feel a need to protect whatever lies within the boundaries we have mapped, and we feel loss whenever part of the territory disappears or changes.
In sports, a team maps territorial boundaries that members protect against trespassers. In American football, the end zone is the object of such protection; in soccer it is the goal; in basketball it is the net, and in baseball it is home plate. But every place, regardless of the sense of ownership that a person or a team might hold, can have more than one “owner.”
What we own is important to us, but no object or place is restricted to a single mental map that defines its boundaries or areas of importance. In American football, the end zone, as I wrote above, is highly significant to a team and its fans. Yet, as the game progresses, a team protects the other end zone, and immediately everyone maps a new territory as worthy of defense. Other parts of the same field can become the centers of mental maps. For the half time band, for presentations of awards, or for acknowledgements of accomplishments, the fifty-yard line is more significant than the end zone. It’s the same field, but, given the purpose of those who use it, the map of the field differs.
So, too, do the maps of your place of business, the map of your home, and the map of your neighborhood differ from user to user. The tree at the corner of your property and next to the neighbor’s driveway becomes a welcoming signpost that beckons the neighbor to “turn here to reach home.” For the neighbor, your tree is a part of a mental map that belongs to his or her zone of comfort.
The old tree that hung over my deck has to go. I don’t have a choice. The tree surgeon is on his way to cut it down. When he finishes, the deck will change in my mental map, going from shady to sunny. I can sit in the sun and regret the change, or I can sit in the sun and welcome the change. The place I call my deck will change. The mental map of my house will change. That change is inevitable, as is the change that will occur to every neighborhood, community, office, county, state, country, or region. Nothing is permanent; no territory immutable.
Place is important to us, but attachment to it can become a boundary that limits how we adapt to change. Attachment also precludes our understanding that others can also map what we map though their maps have other purposes, other qualities, and other associated feelings.
For me, it’s time to remap the deck and to find joy in my new map.
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