Going Uncharted

When we were kids we used to play Pirates! Game on our Commodore 64 computer. There you would just go find an island, attack it by the sea and if you had strong vessels and knew how to navigate through the cannonballs, you could just conquer it. I remembered this game as I was watching “Mutiny on the Bounty” starring Marlon Brando the other day. 

In the movie the ship, under the command of Captain William Bligh (Trevor Howard) and with 1st Lieutenant Fletcher Christian (Marlon Brando), visits the famous Tahiti Island to collect breadfruit. First (for us) an unexpected reversal of fortune takes place through love affairs between the crew and island girl population and then as the adventure continues, a following conflict leads to Lieutenant Fletcher taking over the ship and sending the captain away on a boat. And then the story also includes revisiting Tahiti and going to a wrongly charted island.

And comes my little story today, about going uncharted. Uncharted like the days of Columbus, when there was no Google Maps and no electronic navigation devices, on days where you couldn’t tell beforehand about where you are heading. Those days there was the risk of sinking by hitting reefs, but there was also the chance of finding an island where no man has landed before, reaching an Eden full of fruits and natural resources.

When you take an adventure against the odds betting that you know what you are looking for in your mind, you take a risk. If you have followers and strong believers and if you persist long enough, you can achieve a self-fulfilling prophecy. However, if you give up too soon, you will miss your dream definitely.

And yet there needs to be a stop-loss point. A point beyond which you have to say stop! And then take the next course.

However this decision has neither a navigation device, nor a compass. You have yourself as the equipment and as the decision maker.

If you are the pharaoh in ancient Egypt and if you shoot an arrow at the sky targeting gods, you are very likely to miss. And the ones that surround the emperor unfortunately do not always tell the required version of the truth about the impossibility of the quest.

On the other hand, presence of a target or a guide always helps on a journey, even if it is a wrong one.

There is a famous story shared by Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, famous Hungarian physiologist who won the Nobel Prize in 1937: During the World War I, a small group of Hungarian soldiers were sent by their commander on a scouting mission in cold winter from the Alps. After heavy snow, the team got lost. One of them happened to find a map and they used it successfully to return back to their camp after two days. The commander then checked the map only to find that it is not for the Alps, but for the Pyrenees.

Even a wrong guide helps build confidence on trying to find a way out. And standing for a cause always helps make the trip easier to bear.

It is always good practice to pinpoint a target that many should follow in an organization. And it needs to be stretched enough to force the audience a little bit. A little bit so that when they have completed the task at hand they will have built some new muscles and these new muscles will in turn help them reach even a bigger target in turn resulting in a few more muscles, and so on….

What to do?

If you believe in yourself and in the journey and if it looks promising, then don’t wait for the perfect map, the perfect ship or the perfect crew. Rely on your own internal strengths and go straight. If you can stick to it, it will stick back to you and the reward will follow.

The late Joseph Campbell, the author of the book “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” says:

The cave you fear to enter

Holds the treasure you seek.

And when it’s your turn, what will you do?

NOTE for the map: "A Chart of the Esat India Islands" drawn and engraved by J.Russell, published in Barclay's Universal Dictionary, 1823. Copper engraved map with full original hand colouring. Some foxing, mostly in the margins. Size 23 x 18 cms plus margins. Ref F1770, taken from ancestryimages.com.