A different conclusion

People talk all the time about rediscovering their “national identity” or “cultural affinity” to their homelands after spending a significant amount of time abroad in some foreign country. I, however, found something different. I associate with people from my homeland and people from the United States equally and found that they serve as equally fantastic company.

People have often told me about how they miss home-cooked food, and I understand that, yet I feel something different. Although I would praise it endlessly for its taste, Indonesian food, a rarity in the midst of Midwestern cornfields, is a form of enjoyment rather than necessity to me.

I found something different.

I do not walk around feeling that I bear the flags and banners of “Indonesia’s sole representative” or “the grandson of the Indonesian revolution,” although I value people whose convictions of these sentiments are exceedingly powerful.
But I found something else.

It is the drive to serve, and it is the drive to give to others that I have found. Being surrounded by an incredible amount of helpfulness and diligence has motivated me that it is never enough to just take and utilize as many resources as possible for myself. Being a recipient of excellent education subconsciously plants in you a willingness to do something that will change the world for the better in your own way. This is, above everything else, what I have learned from living in one of the world’s privileged communities.

I will serve, and I will do something for the world’s people, regardless of what their religion, skin color, political affinity or nationality is. National borders are abstract lines that have been unsatisfactorily drawn by colonial powers and ambitious budding dictators of the 20th century. I want people to think that they live in the same planet and eat from the same soil, regardless of their GPS coordinates or passports.