Sailors used to make maps of the places they explored. They were detailed and carefully drawn. But there was always a point where they stopped.

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At the edge, they would write something like here be dragons.

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It sounds like a warning, doesn’t it? Like danger lives just beyond what we understand. Like they were afraid of the edge.

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But sometimes, the space of the unknown is something else.

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It reminds me of old indigenous stories about the monsters in our dreams.

 

The elders—grandparents and grandmothers—would talk with children about their dreams, especially the nightmares. They would say something like:

“They can seem frightening—chasing you, pushing you to run, hide, or avoid them. But they are more, if you are courageous and willing to let them approach.”

 

In those traditions, the monsters weren’t threats. They approached in a way that would get attention, and they carried gifts—something to bring back into waking life. Something of value.

 

Like the marking here be dragons, maybe the maps were never meant as warnings.

Maybe they were signals.

 

Not that something terrible lives there—but that something unknown does. And the unknown can feel frightening, but it is also where the adventure begins.

 

It’s not that there are monsters at the edge of the map.
It’s that the map ends there.

 

We don’t actually know what’s beyond it.

 

But maybe that space isn’t dangerous at all.
 

Maybe it’s possibility. Adventure. Even something that feels like magic—not because it defies structure, but because we don’t yet understand it.

 

Over time, we’ve developed habits for dealing with that edge.

 

It has been my experience that people don’t tolerate unknown spaces well. They feel unsettled. Uncertain.

 

There’s an old story about a prison. Each prisoner, when they arrived, was brought to a locked door. They were told that if they wanted to leave, all they had to do was open it and face what was on the other side.

 

The story goes that no one ever opened the door.

 

We assume their fear of the unknown stopped them. It is assumed they thought there must be a monster on the other side.

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When we see a gap and our brains try to fill it.

 

Asteroids become a missing planet.

 

The missing planet becomes a real planet.

 

When that doesn’t work, it becomes a destroyed planet.

 

And when that still doesn’t work, we add more explanations to protect the first one. 

Our brains struggle with empty space.

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Eventually, we give the unknown a shape—something familiar, even if it isn’t true.

 

Naming it feels easier than sitting with it. Or we take the other path: we pull back.

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We treat the unknown as something to fear, something to avoid, something that shouldn’t be approached at all.

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Both responses come from the same place. Our brain will close the space.

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But closing the space too early doesn’t solve the problem. It doesn’t bring knowledge or wisdom.

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It just replaces the unknown with something that feels stable—and named.

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There’s another way.

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The edge of the map can remain an edge.

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Not a threat.

Not a hidden answer waiting to be named.

Just the boundary of what we currently understand.

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That doesn’t mean there’s nothing beyond it.

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There may be structure there—coherence, definition, something real that we simply don’t yet see clearly.

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But we don’t need to define it in order to move toward it.

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We can step carefully, but with curiosity. We can explore without forcing answers.

Most of what we do happens well inside the map—within constraints we can see, test, and work with. The unknown doesn’t have to be eliminated for the known to function.

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And maybe the unknown is where the adventure is.

Not because it’s dangerous.
Not because it’s magical.
But because it’s not yet determined.

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The dragons aren’t monsters.

They’re just where our certainty ends.

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And what we often find on the other side of the door—

is freedom.

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