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Unstuck 1.0: The Prague Paradox

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Check into any hotel in Prague and you’ll receive a brightly-colored tourist map of the city. In small print at the bottom of this map, you’ll find a caution like this:

The streets of Prague cannot be accurately represented on a map. This map, therefore, is not correct. Following it, you might find yourself lost from time to time. Fortunately,
getting lost is the best way to discover Prague.

An inaccurate map, more useful than a correct one could ever be because the context requires inaccuracy for full understanding. More than simple exposition, this map insists that one’s own discovery must be an intricate part of every instruction.

My life should have come with a similar caution. So should every project plan and instruction manual I’ve ever tried to follow. The Prague Paradox might qualify as pure wisdom. Getting lost just has to be the very best first step to getting found.

Yet I avoid lost, as if getting lost screams something awful about me. Like I should be smart enough to stay found. Like lost means stupid or inattentive or unlucky or, perhaps, undeserving, when it might mean nothing more than that I’m once again on the cusp of some surprising discovery. Once. Again.

Lost is normal. Inevitable. Beneficial! Worthy of aspiring to.

©2012 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved












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