I have been blessed throughout my life to be
able to travel with such variety and frequency. From Switzerland to Cambodia,
from Japan to Australia, it seems that everywhere I turn there is a new miracle
waiting for me. It is this mind set, not merely a sense of adventure but an
undying curiosity, that I have been fortunate enough to cultivate over my
childhood. The joy I feel when traveling, born out of the beauty of the
unknown, manifests itself in every part of my life, effecting my love of
learning, connecting, exploring regions close by, and dreaming of regions far
away.
My love of traveling is linked in no small part
to my passion for seeing the world through another’s eyes. This idea sounds
rather cliché, I know, but I thoroughly believe in its vitality. As a teenager, I am watching the state of the
world through the eyes of someone old enough to see its faults but young enough
to hope for its improvement. I find that we suffer from a collective lack of
sympathy. Sure, around Christmas when donations soar, one could say we are at
least empathetic, but we give as much for our own need to feel charitable as we
do for the needs of the African family to which we give half a goat or maybe 37
cents a day. When we hear of problems in the news, a hurricane or a terrorist
attack or the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls, they are grave problems, we feel
empathy, but they are not our
problems.
I have a different take on the
matter. In Senegal, I made a seashell silhouette of Seth Calvin with a throng
of small girls. They could not understand my words, but they saw in my actions
a kindred spirit. I often reflect on the simple beauty of that moment. We
started out on our separate seashell projects, but one by one, each girl began
to unite, filling in Seth’s outline in the sand. Soon we ran out of shells in
the yard, and Sophie, our kind host, pointed us in the direction of a stash
outside the house. Walking back from the shell pile with an improvised pouch in
my shirt, I looked down to see that one of the girls (probably around seven
years old) had discreetly taken my hand and was looking at me with the
indescribable joy of youth. It is difficult to vocalize the connection I felt
in that moment, but it was a complete one. How could I see her or anyone else
as separate from me when our connections were so clearly recognizable? Usually
all one can expect is a smile or maybe just a particularly meaningful stare,
but these instances of connection are as common as they are meaningful, and I
treasure them as they remind me of my place as a part of something larger than
myself.
An
understanding of the world as my
world is what I offer the Global Initiatives Program. Ironically, the reason I
want to join the program is that what I offer is already there. The Program
prides itself on building members of a global community, global citizens, which
is why I think that the “global scholar” certificate might be a misnomer. After
all, it seems to me that the goal of the program is not to separate oneself
from the world to study it; the objective is to become as close as possible to
the world around you. That focus is what I love about the Program, the
opportunity to integrate myself into someone else’s world, through a talk or a
movie or a performance, without ever leaving my own. I value the Program
because I desperately want build understanding of my world, not a school or a
city or a nation but everything and everywhere. The Global Initiatives Program
to me represents a desire to learn and to experience, the chance to find myself
in others, the chance to find the world and maybe, in some small way, change
it.
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