Maps have a particular power of attraction. In capturing the eye, the imagination comes galloping up behind and before you know it, you’re swinging through jungles or placing chips on green baize or snorkeling over shark and sea cucumbers.
The Globe laid out flat before that eye provides an irresistible chance to dream: notwithstanding historic reasons of Empire, for a couple of hundred years many maps placed Great Britain in the middle.
The sun was said never to set on the British Empire by virtue its territory spanned round the corners. This 1897 map fixes the United Kingdom surrounded by its spoils.
Twenty Nineteen’s dawning illuminates that we must accustom ourselves to a differently configured world. Trade, movement, scientific collaboration and education will all have to wriggle better to accommodate the new shape of things to come.
Perhaps this is an apposite moment to refresh how we understand the subtleties of emotional resilience?
Developing expertise of assessing others’ state of mind – emotional intelligence-gathering – differs from evolving the skill to fortify suppleness and sensitivity to currents. Emotional literacy, accurately reading the signs of others’ mood, allows instant evolution in conducting dialogue.
The strength and wonder of bamboo lies in its flexibility. Bending amid the gales that’ll blow through historic customs this year will help fortify how we emerge. Cultivating kindness is the simplest, titanium-strength strategy to fortify birth into a new world that is coming.
Have yourselves a happily kind New Year.
Madeleine Baird Materials 