I took this picture weeks ago.

I have a thing for globes. The way they record the ever changing names and boundaries of countries. The way you can spin the Earth dizzy, finger gliding over oceans and seas, deserts and rainforests. The way they allow you to see the pieces of the puzzle, to see how everything once fit together before it all drifted apart.

Mostly I like globes because they give us perspective and allow us the illusion of control over everything if only while we are doing the spinning. They show us that as vast as “The World” is, as big and foreign and far away as everything sometimes feels, we are all much closer than we think.

I took this picture weeks ago, before the world started spinning faster all on its own.

I liked the juxtaposition.
I liked the symbolism.
I liked the visual of “The World” being put in the corner.

In the window.

On display.

I liked that the chair and the plants and the sun and “this moment” were all bigger and more important than “the World” which was small and remote by comparison.

Fast forward a few rotations around the sun and I am thinking about globes again.

I am thinking that the world is going through this pandemic for the first time together.

I am thinking that we are all having small moments that are bigger and more important than “the World.”

I am thinking that maybe this isolation and distancing we are being asked to undertake is a chance for us to realize that as far apart as we may think we are from one another, as big and vast as the distance we may feel exists between us, we really all have the same hopes and fears.

We really are more the same than we are different

Closer than we are far apart,

The world smaller than it is big.