The graphic above has been making the rounds with my peers here in India. While it's mildly insulting, it also reflects some truisms about Americans and their world view. Certainly, this is how we, and our egos, look from the vantage point of the second and third worlds and their burgeoning markets. I particularly like the characterization of Canada as "uninhabited." We discount, criminalize, and marginalize a lot of the world that we either don't understand or don't have time for. Not that we're alone in this. My colleague who sent this to me commented that she'd love to do one of these from India's perspective. I suggested that she just change the labels and have a little fun, since she's very witty. Her rejoinder was that she'd have to start from scratch because certainly the Indian subcontinent wasn't large enough, relative to the other countries, to reflect the local point of view.
If there's one thing that the past year-and-a-half has taught me, it's not to discount the nooks and crannies and huge-ass continents of the world that I haven't seen. It doesn't take but one visit to Khajuraho, Amer, Chiang Mai, Darjeeling or Ladakh, to put you in awe of the world's natural wonders and myriad cultures in all their complexity. I cannot imagine my life now without having seen some of these things, but save for this opportunity to live and work in India, it's very likely that I never would have laid eyes on much of what I've seen. It's amazing how single decision points can shape you as a person. I hope that I remember to never stop exploring, and that I instill this wanderlust in my family someday. We must truly be citizens of the world; no one of us exists in isolation. The sooner everyone figures this out, the better off we'll be.
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