“Let me check with Dad” has now been replaced with “I wish I could check with Dad”. I was trying to figure out the best route from Coimbatore to Wayanad, and this is something I would have picked up the phone to ask Dad about. Instead, I asked Google to guide me.
The app gave me two routes. One via Ooty and the other through Palghat and the Nilambur ghat. Both were approximately a 6.5-hour drive, it said. But I remember Dad always recommended another route, but I just could not remember the name of the ghat. A call to Mum and an old driver of ours got me the information. It was via Satyamangalam, then the Dhimbam ghat, Chamrajnagar, Gundulpet, and then home.
When I put some of these names into the map, using the add stop feature, it showed me a 9.5-hour drive. Maybe I used the map wrong, but one thing I was sure of was that Dad knew the terrain like the back of his hand, and I had done that drive a number of times before in under 6 hours.
Do I delegate my drive to technology, or do I partner with it and trust my instincts and knowledge handed down to me by Dad? The map is a metaphor for how I chose to live my life. It has real consequences. My time. My resources. The entire real-world experience of the drive would be a function of the choice I make. The temptation was to say just follow the map and go via Ooty. I’m glad that I did not. I decided to go via Dhimbam, and it took me 5.5 hours.
It was a picturesque route. Especially the area around the Bhavani Sagar Dam, which I learnt is one of India’s largest earthen dams featuring an impressive 8-kilometer-long earthen bund. The drive gave me lots of time to think.
The intersection of technology and the choices we make in life was something that showed itself to me. There is no right or wrong way to go about this. Smart men and women have created and embraced technology to make their lives better from the beginning of time.
Is it making the world better? Is it making my life better? Are these mutually exclusive? Most of my mental meandering ended in one simple thought. Make choices mindfully. Don’t always seek out the shortest or easiest route in life. Find the route that works for you and embrace a bit of serendipity on the way.
This tango between serendipity and the algorithms seems to be the new dance move that we humans need to figure out. Get it right, and you enjoy the dance. Get it wrong, and you are a puppet unwittingly dancing to someone else’s tune.
We are all just walking or driving each other home in the short time we have on this planet. Using my skills as a communicator and coach to help people and organisations make meaningful and mindful choices seems to be a good way to live. The dots connect, and my calling to be a connector of dots for others was reinforced on the road home.
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