There is a particular kind of confidence that only the hopelessly directionally impaired can summon — a bright, baseless certainty that this road is the right one, that the turn is just ahead, that everything is fine. I have this confidence in abundance. My spatial reasoning, on the other hand, is essentially decorative.
I say this not with shame but with something approaching peace. Hard-won peace. The kind that comes after you have circled the same Walmart parking lot three times and told your passenger, with great authority, that you are “definitely not lost.”
The cruelest development of my adult life was the invention of GPS navigation, because it removed my best excuse. Before turn-by-turn directions, I could blame the signage, the map, the unhelpful gas station attendant, the fact that the sun was in an unusual position. Now I have a calm woman’s voice telling me exactly where to go, and I still manage to turn left when she says right, usually because I was already committed to the left and it seemed rude to correct course mid-intersection.
My wife has developed a kind of patient telepathy about this. When I make a confident move that she suspects is wrong, she does not say anything. She simply goes very still in the passenger seat. Like a cat that has spotted something concerning. I have learned to read this stillness. It usually means we are about to see a part of town we did not plan to visit.
I have read that some people have a natural sense of where north is. An internal compass. They feel it, apparently — some orientation toward magnetic north that hums quietly in their chest like a tuning fork.
I do not have this. What I have instead is a vague feeling that north is sort of that way, accompanied by roughly forty percent accuracy, which is only slightly better than guessing.
What I wonder sometimes is whether there’s a mercy in that — in moving through the world without being entirely sure where you’re headed, staying a little more alert, a little more willing to stop and ask. Or maybe I’m just making meaning out of a bad sense of direction.
Probably both.