Looking like London

I am sitting here watching a beautiful sunrise sing out over London’s Heathrow Airport.  It’s not really important where I am coming from or going to, but even a few short hours in London always remind me that the world continues to look like London.  It’s one of the many reasons I love the city.

If you are in a train or bus or public square in London, you realize that the 7 Billion people in this planet more or less look like this melange of people from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe and the Americas.  There are people looking for jobs, people looking for meaning, people looking for trouble, and lots of people looking for a better tomorrow.  Some things ring true across the socio-economic lines that make their way into London.  People like to be connected.  The little black plastic cell phone in everyone’s hand or purse confirms that we love to have the people we love within reach.  People like to get ahead and look sharp.  The globalized brands that have become a strange world language allow us to talk in Burberry, converse in Coca-Cola, and dream in Audi or Mercedes-Benz.  Of course there are always the dialects of Adidas, Nike and Reebok that keep things interesting.  But overall, people like to show what they have but what they have on them.  And everyone loves to be loved.

Just as I am starting to find the face of the world in the crush of people in this London train, a panic takes over.  Because I love the promise of people coming together around global goals, I am forgetting the reality that I have seen with my own eyes that proves otherwise.  I am forgetting who is no ton this train.  I look around in the train and don’t see the children who won’t go to school today that I have met in Ghana or the child brides in Liberia or the mothers in Latin America who may not survive childbirth today.

And then, like a made-to-order reminder of why I love what I do, I get an e-mail from a friend.  She is telling me about a project to get people to talk about smart ways to fight global poverty during the upcoming London Olympic Games.  All of the sudden I am seeing around me hints of how the world is mobilizing in London this year.  The good feelings surround the games won’t just be about friendship and sport.  The world in 2012 has been quilted together with a new set of social networks that let’s us move from social consciousness to global action.

So the world is looking a bit more like London today.  I realize that the men and women I wasn’t seeing in the train a few minutes ago may just show up in London in a few months.  They will be part of the global discussion.  They will be part of what we are rooting for – and acting for – while we watch races and matches and spend money and time in the fun of Olympic fever.  If they aren’t, we only have ourselves to blame.  It’s our job to make sure London looks like the world this year – and looks like a better place every day thereafter.