In many of the interesting and important books being written about racism, structural racism, white fragility and the like an important point is made about bias. We all have some baked-in bias, based on who we are, where we were born, where we are on the socio-economic scale of whichever country we are in. There’s no use denying this (“I have no bias! I don’t see color! I see everyone as equal!) as it’s true for us all, though some more than others of course. It’s important to recognize that it exists and manage it – call ourselves out and ask others to call us out when we are unconsciously employing some ingrained bias.
I submit that travel makes a difference. I am under no illusion that it’s available to all. Travel costs money – especially international travel – and only a small % of people can or will take the opportunity to travel and see new people, places and things. However – I submit – it is only when you do so that you realize what you are missing!
I grew up – as previously stated – as reasonably privileged simply due to the accident of my birth to a middle-class white family. Travel for us, however, was largely limited to visiting relatives, who were within driving distance…though those driving distances always seemed interminable to my and my brother, who struggled to “stay on your own side” of the back seat. Travel memories for me as a child were about reading comic books, confessing “i’m bored, mom” and avoiding Dad’s backhander when I was bold enough to torture my little brother. Then we would arrive at the home of our grandparents and I would discover what being bored really meant….but I digress.
I didn’t even have a passport until after I graduated from college (what I fool I was to avoid going overseas for a semester). It was my professional life that finally opened my eyes, and led me to ensure that my children would not suffer from the same narrowness of vision that I enjoyed. You see – the old saying is true: “you don’t know what you don’t know.” If you grow up in one place, one town, and with your own kind of people around ou all the time, then it is extraordinarily difficult to broaden your thinking, and to combat the biases that are already baked in…whether you are wealthy or poor, black, brown or white. When you are forced to stretch beyond your comfort zone, you learn. It’s impossible to predict how much you will learn, and of course that is a function of how open-minded you are willing to be as you learn….but you will learn, nonetheless.
I was given the opportunity to travel for business. I worked for IBM and ended up in a role (roles, eventually) that afforded me the opportunity to travel the globe, build and run multinational teams, and work in many many different cultures. For a boy from the safe suburbs this was initially way beyond my comfort zone. It eventually became a professional differentiator – I began to teach many others how to do business globally – and I loved it.
When I was offered an international posting, I grabbed it. It didn’t hurt that it was in Sydney, Australia, about as cool a place to live as you can find, I figured. My wife was a little taken aback (“you want to go where? where the hell is that?”) but she was a hero, and we moved all the way around the world with four young children. Imagine if you will, being on a plane for 36 hours with kids aged 8, 6, 4 and 6months. Like I said – a hero.
It was the opportunity of a lifetime, because otherwise my kids would grow up in our very nice wealthy suburban community in Connecticut, and think that’s what the world was like. A bubble is what it was. Now, admittedly, living in a lovely suburb of Sydney was not like we were moving to Calcutta…but nontheless, the kids were exposed to people of different cultures, at school and whenever we would travel. My wife – yes, the hero of the story – would organize for us to travel whenever the kids were off school.
It’s worth a sidebar about my wife at this point. She’s an adorable girl who grew up in one house outside Baltimore and figured she would end up in one house, making a nest of it and have her chicks with her to grow up similarly. When I explained what a wonderful opportunity IBM was presenting with, to move overseas, let’s just say it took a little time for her to get used to the idea. #%$&! It then took about 6 months for her to get used to living in Sydney, making new friends and getting used to the new culture. Once she did, though, a new person was born – she started to live for travel, and trust me, that’s not something you can put back in the bottle. After 35 years of marriage, she still lives for the travel experience above all.
The stories of my kids learning how to adapt, how to make friends, how to count on each other for support, are the life lessons that we enjoyed. After living Sydney, we moved to London. My kids have enjoyed travel to probably 40 countries and they love it. They developed an appreciated for people in different cultures and sensitivities for how different we all are, yet can find commonalities that make life wonderful.
Next blog I will explain how our “16 trips” got much of this started. peace out.
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