After my transfer, I have to meet many new people and retrace many paths to places I know well.
As for the people, that's going well, and everyone is welcoming me kindly. As for the routes... Well, after I got over my initial skepticism, I'm actually quite happy about our sat navs. Most of the time I still look at the route on the map beforehand so that I don't drive completely blind, but more and more I trust these little helpers.
The other day, an unknown navigation system in an unknown car was supposed to guide me from Duisburg to Wuppertal. Actually no big deal - "no thing", as they say now. But suddenly it told me to turn off, although I was on the right road - at least I was pretty sure of that. So I turned anyway - after all, what's the point of having a sat nav if you don't follow it? And besides, I hadn't looked at the route on the map this time.
But after a few meters it was clear that the navi had not noticed the construction of a new expressway. The commands became more and more nonsensical, but unfortunately I could not stop to see if there was a map in the car. So I ignored the navi and drove as good as I could according to my own orientation.
It made me think about how much we trust technology, while we are often so distrustful of people. Of course, we've all had bad experiences, and it's easy to pass them on. But most of us have also had a bad experience with technical devices, and yet we still blindly trust our cars, computers and roller coasters. How would it be if we were to approach people with this same openness: when we meet someone new, we could simply trust them for the time being. We will get to know their limits and quirks soon enough. With the many acquaintances I am currently making, I keep it that way: I approach them as openly as possible and wait to see what develops.