Me to We

I was on a bus.  It was an air conditioned bus, which meant that I was luckier than a lot of the native people to that country.  The year was 2002.  The place was the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico.  I believe the bus was near the Caribbean sea, but what I remember about that bus ride was a person. The person was from Canada.  He spoke about how important it was going to be to become a global citizen and gave us the name of his website.  I have no idea what the website is now, but I remember the experience.

I not only remember the experience that I had on that bus, but I also remember the experience that I had during the spring of 2002 when I could live better than most of the native people in Merida, Mexico.  As a 20 year old, the magnitude of what I was doing didn't sink in.  I didn't realize that I was living a privileged life, because in some ways it was worse than any lifestyle I'd known; however, I now know that that experience changed my life and molded me into who I am today.

The greatest experience wasn't living in the Casa Blanca, as it was affectionately known to the native people.  It wasn't experiencing a new culture with my college friends and driving our friendships deeper, although it did that too.  The greatest experience was going to a village, staying overnight at a former convent, and experiencing the really rural life that I had only ever read about, and the tamales cooked in banana leaves in an open fire pit were the best that I'd ever had.

However, that village didn't have many of the things we take for granted each day.  One woman that we visited had a small hut.  There may have been one electrical outlet, but I couldn't swear to it.  The water wasn't readily available and there definitely wasn't indoor plumbing.

I'm reflective on this time today, because as we look to jobs of tomorrow, the culture in the USA is shifting from that of a "me" to that of a "we" culture.  At a meeting I was recently at, someone stated it this way, "Youth want both a vocation and to be an advocate."  Service is at the forefront of a lot of youth's mind and they are being careful about where they are investing their time, how resources are allocated and being part of the global world.

It's easy for us to get wrapped up in the terrorism in the world, but there's another group out there that is gaining and it is causing a movement from me to we by providing people with interconnectedness that is unprecedented and combining it with universal love.  In his discussion, co-founder of Asana, Justin Rosenstein, shares about these items.  You can view the 30 minute video here.  He describes how we're all microorganisms of a global ecosystem that works a lot better when there's harmony and any war is a civil war, because we're all one collective people of the world.

As one people of the world, we need to put our efforts on living with loving kindness towards each other and our planet.  In addition, we need to zoom out and see the whole picture and by doing so we can see that technology has helped people do just that.  By seeing the humans across the division between the Arabs and Israelis, Facebook has done more to promote peace in the Middle East than 30 years of conflict resolution has done.

I hope that all of us, young or old or in-between, can fight for love and peace and keep moving ourselves toward more harmony with the universe and moving into a culture of we not me.