The Global Generation - Home

I was laying in bed one lazy Sunday afternoon and I thought about Ps life. Simple things like what would he look like as he grew older, would he be a noble, honest, strong and determined man, if he would ever remember how attached he was to me as a baby. And then I realized that P is in a rather unique situation. I look at his friends who are of various nationalities and of mixed races. The next generation is so global, so mixed and mashed that the lines of nationalities and races are no longer an issue.

Take P for example. In essence he is a Chinese Australian/Indonesian but he has a Malaysian born Australian mother married to an Indonesian living in Jakarta. Pretty complicated right? Then I look to his playgroup friends and they are a huge concoction of mixed Caucasian with South American, Japanese, Indonesian, Indian, Thai, and plenty more. Majority of them are typical nomadic expatriate families who love travelling and being stationed in various countries.

How do these children grow up I wonder? Where would they call home?

As for P, how Chinese or Australian or Indonesian will he be?

Then I look at my own life. Brought up in an English speaking household where neither parent or my brother can read or write Mandarin. The only thing Chinese we may have in our daily lives would be eating rice and drinking soup for dinner. Aren't we all a confused bunch calling ourselves Chinese with nothing much to show for besides our skin colour.

Perhaps the main question of being so global is where would we call home?

How do we define home? Would home be a house that has fond memories? A city where majority of our lives were spent? Where our family reside? A place where we have decided to start a family? Or simply somewhere we find ourselves most happy at?

I still call Sydney home simply because it is where I am most comfortable and of course where my family are. Jakarta, is a semi-home of sorts, struggling with the love-hate relationship this city offers.

I do wonder how and where P will wind up. Will he be confused? Or would he seize the opportunities set before him and utilize it fully given his unique situation.

But above all, I pray and hope that he finds home in us, his family.