Maps are subjective. I learned that in my college geography course. It’s an interesting concept for a small-town boy to wrap his mind around: those rectangular and spherical portraits that I’ve always been told are accurate pictures of the world are in fact mere sketches of someone’s interpretation of what the world looks like. They’re not satellite photos; they’re drawings. And they can be contorted too. They have maps that portray certain countries or parts of the world in all different shapes and sizes to illustrate all kinds of things. I could draw a map that says pretty much whatever I want to say about the world. It’s all about perspective.
In teaching literature to Baltimore City students, I’m faced with teenagers who have a very small perspective of the world. Baltimore is their world, and many of them haven’t gone too far outside of the city. So when they look at the map of the Charm City hanging in my classroom, they see their entire reality, broken down into the very diverse neighborhoods around the city. My plan is to direct their gaze to the map hanging right beside this one, a world map. On the first map, Baltimore fills the whole poster. It’s massive, and it contains everything the students know—the affluence of Fells Point and Federal Hill and the poverty of Cherry Hill and Sandtown. On the second, Baltimore is an itsy-bitsy, teensy-weensy dot in the small state of Maryland in the country of the United States in the continent of North America on the half of the map called the Western Hemisphere on the entire map of the world as we know it—or at least as Rand McNally knows it. Perspective.
I find that my perspective is usually quite a lot smaller than I realize. My world is not the world, it’s just the world that I’ve experienced. When I read a book, or travel to a new place, or meet someone with a story unlike my own, my perspective grows. Borders widen. The map of my existence gets a little less fuzzy. And things start to make a little more sense. Of course, I’m still faced with the crazy obstacle that the way I encounter that new book, place, or person is shaped entirely by my growing but still limited perspective. As I learn new things, I have to find a place to fit them within my current understanding of the world.
I’d guess that before 2006, most people wouldn’t have questioned the qualification of a planet. Pluto apparently doesn’t cut it anymore. This change hasn’t been accepted by everyone (http://www.zazzle.co.uk/boycott_pluto_bumper_sticker-128251195418510190). Stuff like this can really mess with the way we think about things, and some people don’t handle that mess very well. My very educated mother just served us nine what?! Several legislators in California dismissed Pluto’s change in status as “scientific heresy” (http://www.space.com/2855-planetary-politics-protecting-pluto.html).
The funny thing is that nothing really changed except some words in a book somewhere. Pluto is still the same as it always was. We just look at it differently now. And while it’s weird to us that our solar system only has eight planets, the next generation won’t think anything of it. No harm done.
Once in a while, an idea comes along that doesn’t fit anywhere in my chaotic box of knowledge and wisdom. Try as I might, it just won’t work within the framework that has been set up over time in my mind. This calls for a paradigm shift. The borders that have been put into place must fall. Walls of reason and logic have to be torn down to fit this new understanding of reality, and any time walls start falling, there is resistance. The fact that there is an opposition doesn’t detract from the authenticity of the message.
Martin Luther King, Jr. changed our perspective on race, equality, and humanity. Not everyone was on board; in fact, someone was enough against Dr. King’s message to force an early end to his campaign and his life. Yet, tomorrow I don’t have to go to work because it’s the guy’s birthday.
I hope we never stop drawing new maps. I hope we keep asking the questions that make people mad. Shift your paradigm. It’s the only way we’ll find the Truth.
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