Have you seen the Leonardo DiCaprio film, The Beach? It was his follow-up to the success he garnered in Titanic. In the film, his character doesn’t just stumble onto this secluded paradise. He hears an urban legend about it and begins his search to find it after acquiring a map. But there’s trouble in paradise. It asks the question what will happen to this pristine beach after he arrives to disrupt the flow of the community that lives along its spectacular but secluded shoreline. And then there is the secluded beach in the hit ABC series, Lost. How it its complexion and character changed after the survivors washed ashore. I would imagine there are still some undiscovered beaches in the world, but they must be few and far between…
There are so few places on this planet left to explore. Most have been found and mapped. And with a program like Google Earth, the entire surface of the planet is just a few clicks away. All you have to do is put in an address, or a general location, and you can see what the satellite saw as it crisscrossed the Earth taking photographs.
I remember a time when my family would gather round the kitchen table as my father spread out a map. When we planned family vacations he always took the time to plan out the routes he intended to take. Now we do a simple search online and a map comes up with the easiest, most direct route to the location we need to reach. There are even some makes of cars that come with GPS systems to help you pinpoint exactly where you are. No longer do you need to pull over to ask directions.
I watched a family being interviewed on the TV news about their vacation plans this summer. Due to the high price of gas, this particular family had no long trips in mind. I would imagine a lot of families will be sticking close to home this year. That’s one downside to the high cost of fuel.
I ran across this excerpt in Life’s Little Instruction Book by H. Jackson Brown, Jr., and published in 1991 by Rutledge Hill Press in Nashville, Tenn. There was a very special reason why he wrote this book. In the introduction he wrote: “This book began as a gift to my son.. As he packed his stereo, typewriter, blue blazer, and other necessities for his new life as a college freshman, I retreated to the family room to jot down a few observations and words of counsel I thought he might find useful. I read years ago that it was not the responsibility of parents to pave the road for their children, but to provide a road map. That’s how I hoped he would use these mind and heart reflections.” I like that description. I think we all provide some kind of map to follow. We can only hope that it provides the most direct route with very few detours.
“Despite the maps, charts, formulas, verbs, stories, and books, I have really had nothing to teach, for my students really have only themselves to learn…” An excerpt from I Am A Teacher by John W. Schlatter and featured in the 1992 collection, Chicken Soup For The Soul.
One of the most spectacular road maps leads millions of miles to a place called Earth. We’ve sent spacecraft outside our solar system with a map showing where we live, pictures of what we look like, and even sounds and voices from our planet. There are those who believe this universe is filled with life. Our sci-fi movies have hinted that there might be superhighways out there among the stars, wormholes in space to easily faciliate the journey from one star to another. If that’s true, I wonder if we’re listed on an intergalactic road map as a major stop, or if we’re just on some lonely back-road, out in the middle of nowhere?
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Don Jackson
