The World is One Family : say Italy and Spain
Sounds of singing have emanated from Italian balconies to those in New York. The Spanish clapping sequence is now ringing through the world to be followed by (I am sure) a thunderous echo in India on Sunday at 5 pm. (Hopefully it will happen on time and for 5 minutes. Knowing Indian Standard Time, it may last for an hour!) But I digress.
Looking back in these times
In times of an unprecedented crisis, it’s great to turn back, look inwards and find ancient wisdom. One of the oft-quoted lines from the Upanishads is
Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam. Loosely translated it means “The World is One Family”. Truer words have never been spoken.
The world IS One Family says the World
One is a relative, the other stranger,
say the small minded.
The entire world is a family,
live the magnanimous.
Be detached,
be magnanimous,
lift up your mind, enjoy
the fruit of Brahmanic freedom.
Not only is the statement standing out in the reality of how a virus has spread across the world like a wildfire, but it is also making the world turn around on its head and come together as one family. (If you want to read more about it, read an interesting blogpost that I found. Click here )
The World is One Family : says the world.
I want to bring together the COVID-19 and Cross Culture series by saying that in the face of a common enemy, (that is extra-terrestrial) we have now come together as one. Most of us who are WFH, Working from Home, as a rare case, are likely to continue that as a new normal. And once again, this is true, across the world. What has changed will remain changed. Nothing will ever be the same again.
The Boundaries are Blurred
So to bring it back full circle, the boundaries are blurred.
The only way to look at this is, that at the end of it all, we are the same.
No matter what country we come from, what culture we represent, what language we speak and what we believe in.
We are one.
We are one family.
And if this is not the eye-opener we needed to function as one family looking after the others in the family a.k.a. the other species on this planet, I don’t think we have learned anything.
This may sound harsh, but it is true,
If we have not learned anything from this healthcare disaster, then we might as well be destroyed by something as microscopic as our mind sets.
And let COVID-19 win.
You decide.
This is the final post on a series on COVID-19 and Cross Culture covering countries like China, Italy, US, Germany and India. To read the earlier ones, check the links below.
The CrossCultural Aspect of COVID-19 – Germany, Italy, UK
United States and the Culture Lens
Italy through the culture lens
Cultural Dimensions & China
Blurred Boundaries
What do you think?
This has been such a good series. I’ve learned a lot as you’ve shared. Things like individualism and a culture’s DNA.
Thank you for putting this together for us to read!
We all need to definitely come together as one= One Family standing together!
Thanks Cindy for following through with this (bit serious) series. I am glad you found it of interest. It fascinates me every time when I see an entire populace behaving in a particular manner. And yes, eventually we are one – one species, one race, one family.