SILVER SPRING, Maryland, 23 March 2013 -- This weekend I attended the Families in Global Transition Conference (FIGT), a warm, thoughtful, remarkably diverse group that is bonded by a profound sense of rootlessness. Known variously as “global nomads,” “third-culture kids,” and “adult third-culture kids,” among others, FIGT attendees have lived in multiple countries, often with multiple passports and citizenships, and no single place to call home.
There’s a culture of openness and closeness that pervades the FIGT conference. If you think about it, if all the attendees are characterized by a lack of a true home, then the conference itself is “home” for many of them. It encompasses a distinct culture and a collection of mutually familiar experiences. That’s a powerful environment if you’re an American who’s lived nowhere but Japan, the mother of toddlers who speak more languages than you do, or if you’d had more than 30 addresses before your 18th birthday.
They are international businesspeople, missionaries, military personnel, nonprofit workers, diplomats, or happy wanderers – or children thereof. At FIGT, they assemble each year to revel in the wonders, challenges, and infinite complexities of the international, multicultural, rootless life.
The novelist and travel writer Pico Iyer, author of The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, & the Search for Home, set the tone for the conference with an
eloquent, witty talk about the ups and downs of the nomadic life. With his characteristic literary flair, Iyer described some of the contrasts and paradoxes of modern international life.
We are, he said, traveling farther apart from each other because technology provides “the illusion of closeness.” He insisted that cultures are as distinct as ever—“It’s a dangerous illusion to assume that the world is becoming homogeneous”—and that deep cultural values persist as strongly as ever.
He suggested that even the paragons of global capitalism—Starbucks, McDonald’s, et. al., offer chances for multicultural experiences.
Some differences are even more subtle, and run far deeper than Frappuccinos and gender segregation. “Even if I speak the language, would I know how to understand Japanese pauses? Japanese silences?” Iyer asked.The menus change from country to country, and so do the mannerisms and values of their customers. A few weeks ago in Saudi Arabia, I unwittingly walked into the “family section” of a Starbucks. That means “no men allowed.”
Iyer recommended one important way to bridge, and understand, all of these cultures. Whether you’re a TCK trying to figure out the world or a native trying to understand other cultures, there’s one tried-and-true resource that doesn’t require getting on a plane and going to a conference. Iyer recommended literature as a means of understanding different cultures – of figuring out those Japanese silences, or even the American bombast. If nothing else, reading provides a chance to relax and quit the tumult that surrounds life on the run.
I focus on this point because, as an educator, I find it particularly gratifying. We can use all the technologies and all the teaching methods in the world, but whether you’re earning a Ph.D. or just studying for the SAT, nothing beats a good book. It may be obvious, but in our digital age, I think it bears repeating: ideas, emotions, values, aesthetics, and language are all contained in the pages of good literature. Arguments, facts, political positions, and avenues for social change lie in scholarly, and even popular, nonfiction. And both reading practices can do wonders for the mind.
“We’re always moving,” he said. “We need time to stay still and be quiet.”
Of course, at FIGT, no one was quiet. Befitting a group with nearly the entire world under its belt, there was way too much to talk about.
