It's dusk. A stranger is driving around the countryside utterly lost. Eventually he comes to a tiny hamlet. The place is deserted apart from a little man sitting on a rustic fence. The stranger winds his window down and asks for directions to Fortunes Hall. The little man removes his peculiar, battered hat, places it upside down between his knees, scratches his head, and without looking up, begins.
"It's like this," he says. "You take the first right, the third left, the second right, pass over the humpback bridge, then you carry on till you reach Goat's Arms. A mile after that you'll see ..." and so he carries on for a full two minutes.
Finally he completes the impossibly convoluted stream of directions, replaces his hat, fixes the stranger with a piercing gaze, and declares, "But if I were you, I wouldn't start from here."
Our friend the stranger has a problem. If you were he, what would you do next? You cannot retrace your steps. There is no one else to ask. Are you obliged to keep driving in the hope that you will stumble on your destination before night descends?
A troublesome conundrum -- or maybe not. If you are less specific about your destination, then maybe you're not lost at all.
CONNECT
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