Cutting Edge Computing

True North and Life: An Allegory April 1, 2021

True North is this, from Google:  Geographic (or True) North Pole: It is the point on the Earth which is calculated as the northerly point which is furthest away from the Equator. It defined as 90°N. It is located in the middle of the Arctic Ocean.

As a personal life goal, it means trying to be the person that you can be, without excuses, to point unambiguously North, toward a clear goal.  It is different, somewhat, for every person, but everyone needs a true North in life.

I have an internal compass.  Compasses do not point to true North, they point to magnetic north.  I don’t understand the geology, but magnetic north seems to move.  Even in my lifetime, mag north has moved several hundred miles.  So we wander around over the period of our lives, maybe not far, but maybe not particularly close, to North.  Look it up.

If we are defining our lives by true North, but have an internal compass, this is a problem, because it means that our life cannot automatically point to true North.  We need to, I think, figure out how to get there through dead reckoning.

My internal compass is wrong, mostly.  I don’t know at any particular time whether or not my life is pointing to true North.  In fact, it’s probably not.  How can I make myself the person that points to their true North?  And gets there, if not right away, by the end of life.

I also have a directional gyroscope inside of me.  I can set that gyro to North, periodically.  But it does something called precession.  It is a mechanical device that eventually becomes inaccurate, and needs to be reset.

And I think that for all of us, if we cannot find and reach true North in our lifetimes, yes, we may crash.  I will repeat myself.  Life is mostly about dead reckoning, which means navigating from one point to the other, using our compass and directional gyro.  There are no other tools in life.  If I am no longer dead reckoning, I am dead.

And.  This is the most important thing in my life.