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How Much of Your World is Imagined?
In September 2026, the United Nations voted overwhelmingly in favour of changing how the world is represented on maps.
For centuries, the Mercator projection has shaped how generations have pictured the world. Yet it dramatically exaggerates the size of landmasses closer to the poles, making Africa appear much smaller in relation to Europe and North America than it really is.
The UN resolution encourages wider use of maps that represent the relative sizes of continents more accurately. The geography hasn't changed. Only the way we've chosen to represent it is being questioned.
It's a striking reminder of how easily we can come to accept a particular picture of the world as reality itself.
And maps are only one example.
Human beings have an extraordinary capacity to imagine. Throughout history, we have created myths to explain the unknown, religions that offer meaning and belonging, and nations built around shared histories and identities. We have developed money, legal systems and institutions that allow millions of people who have never met to cooperate.
These are not simply imaginary things. They have real consequences, shaping how we live, what we value and the opportunities available to us. They are among humanity's greatest creative achievements.
Yet there is a curious paradox. The very imagination that allows us to create possibilities can also establish the boundaries of what we believe is possible.
Over time, the stories we create and inherit become so familiar that we stop recognising them as stories. We simply accept them as the way things are.
And what is true of societies is also true of ourselves.
The stories that become who we are
From childhood, we begin forming our understanding of the world through our experiences, the values and beliefs of those around us, and the meaning we attach to what happens.
Gradually, these become the stories through which we understand ourselves.
We may come to believe that success means a particular kind of career, that security depends on financial stability, or that being valued means always being useful to others.
We form ideas about what we're good at, what we're capable of, where we belong and what kind of life is available to us. Often, we don't question these stories while life continues to unfold as expected. But what happens when it doesn't?
We're living through a period when many familiar assumptions are being challenged. Jobs and professions once considered secure are changing or disappearing. Political and economic upheaval is unsettling expectations about stability and the future. The rapid development of artificial intelligence is beginning to raise questions about what human contribution means.
And beyond these larger changes, life brings its own disruptions. A career comes to an end. A marriage breaks down. Children grow up and leave home. Illness changes what someone can do.
Suddenly, the story that once gave our lives direction may no longer fit. For someone who has spent decades identifying with their profession, losing that role can raise a question far more unsettling than what to do next.
Who am I without it?
Why we hold on
Stories do much more than help us understand the world. They give us continuity, belonging and a sense of security.
We become attached not only to what we believe, but to the person we believe ourselves to be.
Our achievements, possessions, relationships, professions and identities can become so closely woven into our sense of self that questioning them feels like threatening our very existence.
There is something almost like a psychological death in the loss of a deeply held identity. Not the loss of life itself, but the disappearance of the familiar person we have spent years constructing and protecting.
Little wonder, then, that we sometimes hold so tightly to our stories, even when experience begins to contradict them. We defend our beliefs, resist unfamiliar perspectives and seek reassurance in what we already know.
This happens not only in our personal lives but across communities and nations, where shared accounts of history and belonging can become so deeply rooted that challenging them feels threatening.
The stories that bring us together can also become the boundaries that separate us, and often we don't recognise those boundaries until something challenges them.
Seeing beyond the familiar
A map helps us navigate, but it can never capture the whole terrain. It selects what to show, what to emphasise and what to leave out.
Our stories work in much the same way.
They give meaning to what we experience, but they also influence what we notice, how we interpret events and what we overlook.
We may look at something unfamiliar and immediately fit it into a familiar explanation or set aside an unexpected possibility because it doesn't belong to the world as we understand it.
This is where creativity takes on another dimension. We often think of it as the ability to produce something new, yet it also involves our capacity to see beyond what we already know.
Think about what happens when we look closely at a painting, listen to unfamiliar music or spend time in nature.
Our minds are quick to recognise, name and interpret. We see a shape and immediately decide what it resembles, hear a sound and associate it with something familiar, look at a landscape and barely notice what we've seen a hundred times before.
But when we remain with the experience a little longer, without rushing to explain it, something else can emerge. A different pattern, an unexpected connection, something that was there all along but escaped our attention.
The experience hasn't necessarily changed. Our way of seeing has.
Art and nature offer opportunities to explore this, not by providing answers, but by drawing our attention to how we observe and interpret the world around us.
This brings us back to the paradox of imagination.
If imagination has helped us create the stories through which we understand ourselves and our world, might that same creative capacity help us to see beyond them?
The stories we live inside
We can’t live without stories. They connect us to our past, give meaning to our experiences and help us find our place in the world.
Nor do we need to discard them simply because they are human creations.
But there is a difference between drawing on a story to help us navigate and becoming so identified with it that we can’t imagine another way.
The maps we inherit may have served us well for generations. Yet the world changes, and so do we.
Sometimes it takes an unexpected event to show that what we took for a fixed reality was only one way of seeing it.
I wonder how much of what we believe is possible is shaped by stories we have never thought to question.
This article is part of The Art of Navigating, an ongoing exploration of how to find our way through uncertain times. If you'd like to read more articles or have future pieces sent straight to you, please follow the link below.
