The Cartographer's Curse

There once was a cartographer who lived in a small village by the sea. His home was perfectly clean, tidy and every compass, scroll, and ink bottle had its place. The lines on his maps were sharp, his labels precise. He prided himself on never losing track of anything. If something was misplaced, it was never his doing.

Villagers came to him often with their troubles of loosing a toy or a ring, sometimes a car or even a bench… And always, the cartographer would respond, a little tired, a little smug:

“Where did you last see it? When did you last see it?” what can he say more?

It became a routine. The villagers forgot, the cartographer remembered. He pointed them in the right direction, again and again. But with each question asked, a small irritation grew.

“Why don’t they keep track? If everything has a place then they don’t get lost.”

But then, one morning, the cartographer awoke to find that a part of his own map was missing. Not a page. Not an island.

But something more… unnamed region of his inner world had vanished. A blank spot. No lines, no markings, no compass rose to guide him. He searched the drawers, the floor, the attic, his thoughts coming at night, his whiskey bottle…

He remeasured and redrew, but the space remained stubbornly undefined.

For the first time, he felt what the villagers felt.. not the inconvenience of a misplaced item, but the echo of something deeper. A haunting sense that something essential had slipped away, and no amount of order could bring it back.

In the silence of his study, the cartographer sat with this emptiness.

Only then did he understand: maps are only useful when you know what you’re looking for. And some losses don’t have coordinates. That’s what makes loosing something meaningful… the opportunity to learn from what you have and what you lost.