I felt that this probably needed a bit of explaining, so here it is...
For those of you that know me, you’ll know that I quite often describe myself as this.
Everybody gets asked the question ‘Where are you from?’ and for some time it was the question I always dreaded. Where am I from?
It was always going to be a tedious answer for me. I went through phases of answering this question with questions ‘How long have you got?’ ‘Do you want the long or short version?’
Then I went through a phase of answering it with ‘I’m ethnically confused’ - finding it difficult to place myself within mixture of cultures I had lived in.
One day I answered this question with my usual ethnic confusion and someone took a few moments enquire about my “identity crisis”. After giving this person my long drawn-out life story (at the age of 21), he turned around and said to me ‘not confused…enriched’. From that epiphanic moment I never went back to ethnic confusion, but relished the notion of being ‘Ethnically Enriched’.
So how did this fascination with global citizenship come about? I spent a year volunteering with a development agency and started to realise just how much our actions impact on those all over the world. The one thing that really stuck with me from that year was ‘Global Partnerships’.
Global – denoting of the world
Partnership – a relationship (more than one stakeholder)
Seeing countries work in this way to promote development – shared experiences conveyed in different cultural settings – made me realise that people really aren’t ‘worlds apart’. Human beings still have similar ideals of ultimately wanting to live in basic comfort and happiness. We can (and do) work together to achieve common goals (with tangible results – international development).
Nurturing any relationship requires all parties to play a (dare I say equal...) part.
Bear with me, we’re nearly there... let me come back to my global identity. As a citizen who has already experienced so much of the world (formed a relationship with all it has to offer), through living in and visiting places, meeting people, through my own family tree and even through the ever-growing global consumer market, I have decided it’s my social (global) responsibility to try and give something back .
So if you ask me, “Where are you from?”
I would say “I am a global citizen” and I am lucky enough to belong to many parts of the world.
Everybody gets asked the question ‘Where are you from?’ and for some time it was the question I always dreaded. Where am I from?
It was always going to be a tedious answer for me. I went through phases of answering this question with questions ‘How long have you got?’ ‘Do you want the long or short version?’
Then I went through a phase of answering it with ‘I’m ethnically confused’ - finding it difficult to place myself within mixture of cultures I had lived in.
One day I answered this question with my usual ethnic confusion and someone took a few moments enquire about my “identity crisis”. After giving this person my long drawn-out life story (at the age of 21), he turned around and said to me ‘not confused…enriched’. From that epiphanic moment I never went back to ethnic confusion, but relished the notion of being ‘Ethnically Enriched’.
So how did this fascination with global citizenship come about? I spent a year volunteering with a development agency and started to realise just how much our actions impact on those all over the world. The one thing that really stuck with me from that year was ‘Global Partnerships’.
Global – denoting of the world
Partnership – a relationship (more than one stakeholder)
Seeing countries work in this way to promote development – shared experiences conveyed in different cultural settings – made me realise that people really aren’t ‘worlds apart’. Human beings still have similar ideals of ultimately wanting to live in basic comfort and happiness. We can (and do) work together to achieve common goals (with tangible results – international development).
Nurturing any relationship requires all parties to play a (dare I say equal...) part.
Bear with me, we’re nearly there... let me come back to my global identity. As a citizen who has already experienced so much of the world (formed a relationship with all it has to offer), through living in and visiting places, meeting people, through my own family tree and even through the ever-growing global consumer market, I have decided it’s my social (global) responsibility to try and give something back .
So if you ask me, “Where are you from?”
I would say “I am a global citizen” and I am lucky enough to belong to many parts of the world.
Dear Anita,
ReplyDeleteGreat thoughts expressed. The title is suits you the best:)