When I was young, the elders gave us a map.

Study hard.

Get a university degree.

Find a good job.

Work hard.

Buy a house.

Educate your children.

Retire.

It was not foolish advice.

In fact, it was excellent advice.

For the world in which they had lived.

Then something strange happened.

The world changed faster than the map.

Today a young man can have two degrees and still depend on his mother for fuel money.

A woman can spend twenty years building an impressive career, retire at 60 — and discover that her job had become her entire identity.

A father can spend his life building a successful family business, bring all four children into it, and unknowingly concentrate the entire family’s future in an industry being disrupted.

A mechanic who has repaired cars for thirty years can wake up one morning and find vehicles arriving whose batteries, electronics and software he barely understands.

None of these people is stupid.

Many are extremely knowledgeable.

Their problem is more uncomfortable:

Yesterday’s knowledge is meeting today’s reality.

And sometimes we respond by accumulating even more knowledge.

Another degree.

Another certificate.

Another seminar.

Another motivational book.

But perhaps the question is no longer:

What else do I need to know?

Perhaps it is:

What has changed around me — and what must I now do differently because I know what I know?

An old African traveller did not curse his map when the river changed course.

He looked up.

That may be one of the great skills of our time:

Knowing when to stop staring at the map and start reading the territory.

— Uncle Rwamiti

Making sense of change through ethical storytelling.