Navigating Life's Maze: How the Tube Map Metaphor Can Help You Find Your Way

When I made my first trip to London, England in 1991, I was an immediate fan of the Tube system. It went everywhere. It was so convenient to use and the Tube Map was my new best friend. I also had a regular map of London, one of those fold out ones. But it was always so annoying to stand on the street corner with the map wide open trying to figure out where I was going to go next. Much easier to sit in the youth hostel the night before, look where I wanted to go, figure out the nearest tube stop... and then use the tiny little Central London tube map to navigate! Sooo much easier.

The thing with the tube map is... it's a schematic diagram map (like electrical circuit diagrams). It looks really pretty and colourful, but in order to get all of those lines into a reasonable amount of space... things like scale and distance are sacrificed.

Over the years, as I returned again and again to London, I followed my pattern of using the Tube map to navigate my way around London. Which... now... seems a bit weird. I mean, London has a huge network of buses that go in every conceivable direction. But... they are also soooo confusing, at least to a newcomer. Which bus goes where? Is this bus going close to where I want to go? Ugh!

Of course, there is also walking... and I did a heck of a lot of walking in London... but it was often underground. Walking into a tube station entrance... then going down a gazillion escalators... finding the correct platform (it's a maze down there)... and then doing the reverse at the other end of the journey.

There are Many Ways from Point A to B

But here's what I have discovered on some of my most recent trips to London. What looks far apart on the Tube map is often... actually much closer than you would think.

Let's take High Street Kensington, my base stop when I stayed at the Holland House Youth Hostel. It has both the Circle (yellow) and District (green) Tube lines passing through (It's on the left hand side of the map at left). Let's say I wanted to go to... Knightsbridge which is on the Piccadilly Line (dark blue) - just down and to the right of High Street Kensington.

You can see that there is no direct connection between High Street Kensington and Knightsbridge. I'd need to either transfer at Earl's Court, Gloucester Road or South Kensington. But... what does it look like in real life?

The Tube lines are marked in grey above and the red line is the bus route. Do you see??? With the Tube, depending on if it was the Circle or District Line, I might go down to Earl's Court, then over to Gloucester Road, then South Kensington and finally to Knightsbridge. It could take 15 minutes... of Tube time. That doesn't include the time it takes to walk down all those stairs and roam around looking for the correct platform. So let's say 20 minutes, but it might be even longer, with wait times and what not... So more like 25 minutes.

And the bus... that would take 14 minutes. Plus wait times... but still... that seems a heck of a lot quicker than the Tube.

Oh... and if I wanted a lovely walk... I could actually make the walk in 30 minutes... through Hyde Park, no less! What the heck? I mean... when it's bucketing rain, that might not be the driest option but... when it's nice out... there is no reason why I couldn't save myself some $$, get some exercise, and likely beat the Tube traveler. We'd have to do an experiment like that some day. And... during rush hour in London... I've often sat on a bus and watched pedestrians get along the road faster than the bus!

The thing with the Tube map is this... it looks like the only way to get from High Street Kensington to Knightsbridge is... via those Tube lines. It doesn't show me that there are actually many many ways to get from A to B... they just aren't on this map.

Look at the bus route map for that area...

There are at least 3 buses that run along that stretch of road between High Street Kensington and Knightsbridge. And my own two feet can do that stretch as well...

Many Ways from A to B in Life

Which makes me think... this is actually kind of a cool metaphor for life. We get trained from a very early age to use the Tube Map of Life... you go to elementary school and then to middle school and high school. You choose your course work in Grade 11 and 12 based on your plans for the future - vocational, university, etc.

You graduate from Grade 12 and then move on to vocational training or college and university. You usually get a job when you are 16. You get an apartment with friends (cause it's too expensive in many places to live on your own anymore!). You eventually get a job, make some money and start paying off your student loans or credit card debt. You meet someone nice and then and you get married and have kids. You buy a house and get a mortgage. Yay!

But what if... there are other routes? What if you don't have to pass through the college/university station? What if you can just take a direct route? Or another route? What about these teens who create some hot app that makes $$$$ right off the bat? Or what about Greta Thunberg who has taken a very unconventional road??

And is it the worst thing to take the "wrong" bus that takes you on a roundabout tour of London and requires you to change buses several times to get to where you want to go? Whether the destination is success or fame or fortune for fulfilment or whatever... 

The Game of Life (not many choices!)

Heck, the journey is often most of the fun!! As long as you're not sitting there on the bus thinking... "I'm lost... I don't know what I'm doing with my life! I'm on the 'wrong' path of life!" Are you?? Really?? Maybe not. Maybe that path IS your path of life.

Sometimes, we think we want to get somewhere... like fame or fortune or family... but as we go along, we find more interesting paths... more interesting destinations. Are we derailed and side-tracked? Maybe not.

There is more than one map to life... and the Tube map is not it! There are way more paths out there than we can ever imagine. There are more life destinations than we can dream of. Find a different map... find a different route... choose a different destination... heck... make your own map as you go along!