Ambassador Exchange

Does it really matter what royalties and celebrities say? As far as I know, people can say anything they wish to, but they’d better live up to it. On the other hand, I would look for inspiration in any uplifting quote I can put my fingers on. So here is my little vision of “global ambassador exchange…”

Dallas, Texas has been a lighthouse since the T. V. series “Dallas” sent its ambassadors, JR and his gang, to homes across the globe. Dallas still lives up to its spirit: it has welcomed other international ambassadors like Queen Noor of Jordan who came to speak at the Genesis Women’s shelter’s Mother’s Day luncheon earlier this month. This weekend, King Tut (exhibit) leaves Dallas to San Francisco where he will be residing until March 2010.

Meanwhile, Pope Benedict XVI visited the Middle East starting with Jordan, then the Holy Lands. Get the picture? The world is witnessing some ambassadorial exchange. Did I mention the Egyptian president will be visiting the US this month? Oh, and President Obama will be visiting Egypt June 4 before he heads to Europe? So what do all these celebrities have in common? Many things, but what interests me personally is their attempt to spread understanding under the umbrella of international communication.

Some say their missions are geared towards peace. Queen Noor says peace starts at home. The Pope is promoting peace (this is not the time to open old wounds about what he had previously said, for the record.) Others are planning to build a bridge of communications. President Obama has started his share, one brick at a time. Our former Dallas mayor, Ron Kirk, is the new U.S. Trade Representative and he is talking globalization. On a Fox 4 interview on May 16, 2009, he said that it was important to understand and visit the world outside the U.S. The excursion, he said, will make us interface with people with different cultures, faiths, and languages.

So what is globalization? (I’m borrowing some old prose from the internet.) Globalization is reading this blog using America’s Bill Gates technology which he got from the Japanese, through a computer that uses Philippine-made chips, Korean-made monitors, assembled by Bangladeshi workers at a Singapore plant, transported by trucks driven by Indians, and sold to you by a Chinese who drives a German car with a Dutch engine. The list goes on…

In other words, we no longer live like hermit crabs. We live in an open world that makes us interact with one another despite our diversities. And yes, as the previous Dallas mayor mentioned, the sooner we learn to understand each other the happier we will be. This applies to every community in my opinion. It is an all-inclusive package: borders are two-way streets; as citizens go out, foreigners come in (with a bundle of cultural and religious diversity.)

Our world is fertile ground for common understanding. Monotheistic faiths share more in common than people imagine. The Pope has spoken the truth when he said during his visit to the Holy Lands: “here the paths of the three great monotheistic religions meet, reminding us of what they have in common.”Our next excursion will uncover these commonalities.