Mr. Harvey’s Thoughts on Mapping One’s Future Through Self Discovery

Fundamentally, maps are essential tools for living -  we use them daily to navigate our towns, our cities and our world, and it’s quite hard to imagine a world without them. Some of you, like me, came of age in the pre-digital era where the physical map was a trusty companion. You wouldn’t dream of a road trip without your Pearly’s map book. Sometimes, you would have to pull over to determine if you were interpreting it the right way and if, for some reason, you forgot your map you could become lost. For our young digital natives here this morning, that may be an unfamiliar concept - having no idea where you are or how to get to where you want to go - that is fascinating to me and somewhat sad – if you have never been lost, then I’m not entirely sure  you can really appreciate the beauty of reaching a difficult destination. Today, maps are no less important, although they are seamlessly integrated into our phones and cars so much so that they have become extensions of ourselves. What’s more, we now permit the map to tell us where to go - to a certain extent we have deferred our agency to the map. All of us, I’m sure,  have heard the stories of that person who follows their GPS so closely that they end up driving into a lake. 

But on a figurative level, maps can be much more than navigational tools. Sometimes they are assertions of power. When I was an elementary school student, I remember quite vividly the large world map at the front of the classroom and the teacher instructing us to note (and memorize) all the countries coloured in Pink. These represented the British Commonwealth - the Dominion, so vast in size that the sun was always shining on one of its territories. That, too, was an assertion of power, and a successful one at that because it instilled in many of us a sense of awe and deference, that we were just one small part of this massive, monumental kingdom. In this regard, the map we relied upon changed our perception of reality. 

Symbolically, each and everyone of you is building an internal map that you use to navigate life, and its unique composition influences your perceptions of the world. When I ask you the question, “Who Are You”?, what is the first thing that pops into your mind? Is it your genetics (I’m 6 '5” with an astronomical IQ and a luscious mane of hair), your nationality (Canada, eh, bud), your ethnicity (Canadian by choice, Punjabi by nature!). Maybe it's your faith (or lack of), your family, your ideological affiliations, or your race, your gender, your sexuality or maybe it's the sum of your lived experiences. There are so many forces that contribute to the map you carry within you. Think of them as mattering maps—cognitive schemata that you superimpose upon reality. These internal blueprints do not merely catalogue information; they actively filter what you notice, interpret what you experience, and dictate what you prioritize as significant. By assigning weight, value, and meaning to certain paths over others, your mattering map fundamentally directs your focus, guides your decisions, and defines your active engagement with the world around you.

I believe wholeheartedly that the value of a CDS education is the result, in part, of our ability to create a culture that encourages you to draw your map, and to discover what should matter most. It’s in our student-life offerings, it’s in our Portrait of Graduate and character education, it’s prominent in our Athletics and Arts Programmes, and it’s especially evident in the supporting and caring culture we have worked so hard to create here at CDS. Our sincere hope and designated mission is that by the time you leave us, you’ve had ample opportunity to discover uncharted lands, to question what you’ve plotted, and by doing so, strengthen and define your map’s contour lines and to explore side routes and maybe even a few dead ends.  That’s what Education with Balance promotes - self-discovery and, hopefully, the uncovering of new passions and directions. In other words, a mattering map that will steer you with clear direction toward a successful future and a flourishing life. 

 

I also believe that we have an exceptional academic program that will provide you with everything you need to map your future. Choose your destination. If you envision yourself as a top-notch lawyer, accountant, engineer, coder, scientist, academic, entrepreneur, doctor, CEO, butcher, baker, candle-stick maker  –you name it – permit us to teach you the skills, knowledge, aptitudes and perseverance that will assist you in plotting your route. If you dream of orienteering that steep mountain of  social, cultural, or economic change - don’t worry - we have compasses a plenty and lots of advice on topography - we won’t let you fall, If, on the other hand, diving head-first into those dark, enigmatic seas of creative arts is your passion, you will find we are equally adept at oceanography – we know the currents and we know the waves – let us show you how to hold your breath or at least where to find scuba gear! If you think I’m being hyperbolic here, I would ask you one last time to reflect on this ceremony. Every student in this auditorium has the opportunity to devise the map that will guide them to where they need to go. 

I do, however, have one caveat for you. Your goal at CDS is to create your map, not to complete it. There is nothing so misguided, self-defeating and sad as to come to the conclusion that the map you carry is completed - that you have figured it all out. That is true whether you are five, fifteen or fifty. There is a beautiful, one-paragraph  story by the Argentinian writer, Jorge Luis Borges entitled “On Exactitude In Science”. In it, the king of a distant land hires the world’s greatest cartographers to create for him the most specific and complete map of his kingdom. They labour at this gargantuan task for years, and they are so good at it - so singular and exacting and so in search of perfection - that they finally succeed in creating a map that achieves a 1:1 scale of the empire. In other words, the map is so detailed and comprehensive that it is as large as the kingdom itself. And, of course, it becomes in its completeness - useless. They end up throwing it out where it slowly rots in the desert. So what’s the takeaway here? Well, one is that representation is not reality. Another is that true knowledge and understanding work by omission. A useful map must distort reality through selection: roads matter, individual blades of grass don't; borders matter, the texture of every stone doesn't. Knowledge isn't simply the accumulation of information. It is also the intelligent exclusion of information. And so…as you construct your map here at CDS, we ask that you occasionally reflect upon it and ask yourself two important questions: What does my map allow me to see, and what has to be left out in order for me to see it? If you can figure that out, you won’t just be knowledgeable; you will be wise.

 

Let me conclude by giving you a gift. It’s a gem of a poem by the Canadian writer Gwendolyn McEwen who I think understood all too well the centrality of discovery and map making in a well-lived life

do not imagine that the exploration
ends, that she has yielded all her mystery
or that the map you hold
cancels further discovery 

 

I tell you her uncovering takes years,
takes centuries, and when you find her naked
look again,
admit there is something else you cannot name,
a veil, a coating just above the flesh
which you cannot remove by your mere wish 

 

when you see the land naked, look again
(burn your maps, that is not what I mean),
I mean the moment when it seems most plain
is the moment when you must begin again

Thank you. I wish all of you a successful academic year.