Turns Out, I Know the Way

Although some early GenX folks refuse to claim me, I am actually and proudly GenX. My birth year plants me there. Meaning, I am also from the analog era, where I always had an atlas in my car, just before MapQuest. 

Today, I’m a pretty big fan of the Waze app. And to be honest, I’m not sure what I did between MapQuest and Waze, but there had to be times I could get around without them. Recently, however, I challenged myself to get around in my new little town without assistance. The feeling afterward was surprising.

Set Free

I had a guest in town and wanted to show off Lake Erie and one of our local breweries. We got in my car, I habitually queued up Waze, then said, “You know what? I’m going to get us there from memory. And if we get lost, oh well, it’ll be an adventure.” 

Spoiler alert — we made it! Yes, I took a wrong turn, but we got to explore more of my local community on the way. It felt freeing. I was able to enjoy the drive with a small sense of adventure and show off to my friend that, yeah, I know my way around. With my copilot, Waze, I would have been distracted, making sure I was ready for the next move. 

I recently read on CNN.com about a journalist who challenged herself to a week-long phone detox and experienced something similar. While hers wasn’t navigation-related — she was in a cab in a new city and noticed a park for the first time in four months, something she’d been missing because she was usually staring down at her phone — it was the same.

And It Felt So Good

There are a few reasons this felt good for both of us. One reason a study by Louisa Dahmani and Véronique D. Bohbot points out is how the use of GPS chips away at our spatial memory and ability to get around on our own over time. When we outsource our navigation skills, we stop noticing the things around us. When we broke from our devices, we stumbled upon joy.

Johann Hari, in his book Stolen Focus, discusses a similarity in our ability to be present. Hari argues that we are losing something else when we lose our focused attention. Distractions, like our phones and their endlessly useful apps, put us at risk of losing our ability to let our minds wander. Low-stress presence with unanchored attention is where creativity and meaning live.

Presently Fulfilled

What have we stopped noticing, and might we discover if we put our phones down? Researchers Aporta and Higgs put it perfectly, cited in Dahmani and Bohbot’s GPS study — “There is a sense of fulfillment and accomplishment in being able to relate fully to the activity we perform and to the environment in which we are.”

Even though my wayfinding moment was small, it brought me joy, a sense of accomplishment, and encouragement that I actually can get there on my own.

AI tools supported research, additional source identification, and editing for this post.