Your Sense of Direction

Some people manage to navigate in unfamiliar areas just fine, while others can get lost walking home from school. We used to be able to tell those people apart, until everyone became so reliant on GPS to do the navigating for us. When my daughters started driving through big cities, I told them not to panic when they realize they are in the wrong lane; just go with it. It's better to be lost than to crash, and they needed to learn how to get un-lost anyway. That's what my parents told me, too. 

Science has determined where in the brain our navigation skills lie, and we've learned that part of our talents in that area are genetic. Still, we can get better at wayfinding by learning, observation, and practice. It's a pity that so many people have outsourced that task and no longer practice finding their way around without GPS. I can see a time in the near future when these same people outsource all their critical thinking to AI and lose that ability, too.