I have often referred to Obama's election as "the age of the global citizen" and I'm excited to be a part of this. Especially here in Obama's original home of Honolulu, I feel as though I am getting the chance to continue to emerge as a global citizen.
Today included my interacting with people in the UK, NY, Boston, writing an email to Rwanda, and getting a heartwarming good night call from Ben Brandzel who is in Johannesburg in South Africa.
Later I got ice cream and sat around drinking herbal tea with Layla and her French friend Noe (a juggler and solar physicist), Noe's girl friend from Yemen, Nada (also a solar physicist), and two of their friends visitng from France.
And this was under the back drop of my spending a lot of time, looking out at the ocean in the middle of the tropics and working on international issues. So I feel like I truly have turned into quite a global citizen.
Perhaps one of the coolest parts of today, however, was my Tai Chi class, with my teacher Jonathan. Jonathan has been doing Tai Chi for about forty years and martial arts for about fifty years.
There are only two other people in this one hour class, so there's a lot of personal attention. I think a Euro-American studying Tai Chi in Hawaii is another example of global citizenry, but I think Jonathan adds something very interesting to this because the class is not simply around Tai Chi. It's also around energy work. Activating chi or as my breathwork teachers would call it from the Indian tradition, prana. But essentially it seems that chi and prana are the same. And the amazing thing in slowing down and doing energy work is that for as much as I love meeting people from different parts of the world and working on international issues, it is in going within and doing energy work that my body, mind, and spirit truly feel connected to the actual world. The sense of openness and calm is truly something that I am very grateful for.
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