We come from everywhere, crossing cultures to build new communities
and enrich each other’s lives.
© Orbon Alija / iStock

Crossing Cultures: A Perspective on Traveling Through Life

Ever since I opened my first “big kid” textbook in third grade, I’ve been fascinated by one of history’s earliest, ongoing events—the ways we the people of Earth are perpetually crossing cultures and coming together again in shared places.

In airports and train stations, the faces of those arriving and departing reflect every emotion—excitement and curiosity, exhaustion and confusion. Meanwhile, we’re all traveling through life.

Alongside the joys and challenges of this journey, we each carry the need for home, a place to come to and people who want us to be there.

Coming or going, rooted or uprooted, we are all traveling through a world we share.
© Joyce McGreevy

Sometimes the place is a country, a state, or a city.  There’s a dance to these shared places that I love, a movement around and with each other that we can witness on any given day.

It’s in the way we share busy crosswalks without colliding, or make room for each other on a crowded subway.  It’s in the way we hold doors for one another, help someone carry a heavy suitcase, or ease a stroller safely over an obstacle.

I see it at times when we’ve absentmindedly left something behind, and someone rushes after us, waving our nearly-lost possession like a flag, relieved to restore it to us. And then? With or without a shared language, we share a smile.

In the back-and-forth of deeper conversations, we share more of where we came from. We reveal our attitudes and values.  We try out new ideas. We solve problems and work through conflicts. We discover, grow, and celebrate.

In such moments, we’re not just traveling through life, we’re traveling together. Without questioning where others come from, we create something important together—a sense of community that carries us all forward.

We All Come from Somewhere

For all of us in this world, life starts on a particular day in a particular place in a particular culture. Then we start that travel through life. Whether we move to Oregon from Texas or come to one country from another, the people and places we encounter add to our lives, expanding and enriching the culture that we came from.

These encounters are a little like a potluck where everybody brings something from their home  and there’s something new for everyone. New tastes, all kinds of food. And the way we share it with each other? That’s called community.

We all come from somewhere to gather together in community.
© Joyce McGreevy

What We Carry Together

My extended family is daily created by people who carry where they came from. You wouldn’t guess it to look at just me, but collectively, we carry many languages, including Chinese, Spanish, Turkish, Irish, Hebrew, English, and Italian.

We cover all different faiths and none. We’re straight, gay, we live in big cities, small towns, and rural areas. We agree and disagree on everything from food to music to our perspectives and philosophies.

In short, we’re like many families today.

Factor in our friends, neighbors, and co-workers. Every time we get together, the circle widens. “We’re going to need more chairs!” someone says and somehow we always find enough.

We carry chairs, we carry food. We carry where we came from, the better to share it.

We are better when we share what we carry, when we welcome each other to the table.
© Joyce McGreevy

The Journeys We Share

As humans, where we come from covers a vast array of differences: from our birth years to our personal appearances, from our histories to our hopes, our spoken languages and the unvoiced languages of our dreams—in our cultures and circumstances, our certainties and changes, our traumas and triumphs, our gifts and goals.

As humans, wherever we are, wherever we come from, we have the power to do something truly extraordinary. We can connect across cultures and strengthen each other’s sense of belonging.

Of course, that takes patience.

It takes getting to know one another. Uncrossing our arms and pulling our chairs closer together. Sharing our “travels” and discovering where these journeys of experience connect.  Using our words to welcome, our listening to understand.

In sharing our differences, we create solidarity through respect.
© Joyce McGreevy

The Essential Difference that Our Differences Make

Something remarkable happens when we say, “Thank goodness you’re here.” It’s an Oh, I see moment: We discover that the combination of our differences is exactly what’s needed for our worthiest endeavors to flourish.

So much is enriched when we carry where we came from and share the wisdom: a community garden, a classroom, a local business, a theater production, a life-saving surgery, an environmental effort, a country that comes closer to its ideals.

In those times, we find ourselves capable of crossing cultures and comfort zones. In those times, our differences make a positive difference together.

“Welcome,” our actions say. “Pull up a chair, there’s room for everyone at the table.”

In those times, wherever we come from, whatever we carry, we’re traveling through life together. In those times, we’re creating a shared place called home.

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