Global citizenship…hmm. Running into friends, or friends of friends in the most random places – Christchurch, Barcelona, Goa, or Suva. Relatives across the continent, and around the world. Old friends who have moved far and wide. New friends from far and wide. A glorious city, Toronto, full of richnesses from the whole world.
To me, global citizenship is the unbelievable convergence of lives across the globe, a connectivity new to human history, and thus a redefinition of the human experience.
We are at a unique moment in time when long distance transportation is relatively cheap and accessible, and when urbanization has drawn hundreds of millions of people into cultures of speed and travel.
For the first time in 20,000 years of human history, now family and friends, work and study can draw us countries or continents away. And we are not forever flung from each other, instead we can easily visit the people we know who are far away or vice versa, and travel far and wide for leisure. (I am speaking of course from a Canadian middle class perspective).
The result of this easy access has been both catastrophic and wondrous, both devastatingly impactful on the environment and ‘labour markets’ and ‘natural resources’, and beauteously expanding cultural understanding and religious interconnections and the human experience. We can see how different we are, but more importantly we can see how similar we are.
I’m reminded of when I was travelling in India, and an older man asked me where I was from (being of Indian descent but looking obviously out of place and missing the language, people were very often curious to know). I answered that I was from Canada. The man looked at me, smiled, bobbled his head of course, and responded ‘Same same, but slightly different’.
Same same, but slightly different. Indeed.
Leah, Toronto, Canada
