Globes

— I grew up loving globes. My chief fun many nights after being tucked into bed was studying an old McNally globe under lamplight, using its colour-coded nations as the starting spot from which empires would rise and fall amid the tumults of battles, treaties and intrigue my mind’s stage would put on for my sole entertainment.

The globe was predisposed to this game, I think, as it was already out-of-date enough to let me know the temporary nature of world domination. The British Empire was in red. USSR in green (along with a few other communist nations of the period). Africa was nearly as patchworked as the United States of America (the only country that got gifted more than a single colour — which generally made the U.S. the most likely candidate for a warzone, what with Massachusetts being allied with the Russians, and Texas with the British, and so on.) Most nights, the Mauritian Empire ruled the world. I liked the idea of an island much, much smaller than Britain being the focal point of the world. 

Conquerors rose, and the masses cowered before them. Peace-loving patriots rose up and pushed back their oppressors. Alliances formed, alliances broke apart. An entire planet was at the command of a gangly 8-year-old kid, lying bored in his bed.

Now that I’m older, instead of building empires at night, I often lie awake thinking about designs, deadlines, projects, bills, relationships, and on and on and on it goes. There’s no globe in my bedroom. But sometimes, just to keep that child I was — clear-eyed and right-headed — near the surface of my mind, I pull out an old globe I’ve got on a shelf down in my office, and I play that old game with my old self on that old globe. For a moment, my thoughts expand past the build-up of my situation, plans, fears and limitations. 

For a moment, I’m a conqueror and a freedom-fighter again. And some days, oddly enough, just that makes a world of difference.