Why is it so hard for people to believe that I consider myself a citizen of the world?

Others seem to want to pigeonhole my cultural identity, Diamond Yao writes.

I was born in Montreal to ethnic-Chinese immigrants. My parents highly valued open-mindedness, and encouraged me to think critically about the issue of culture as I was growing up. They taught me to cherish my free will, and the prized gift of a democracy, something that had been brutally torn from them in childhood by a ruthless communist regime.

Hence, the topic of culture has always bothered me, because no one chooses the cultural mix they are born into, yet it is a central part of our personal identity. And that idea scared me because I wanted to have full control of my identity. I had free will, after all, and should be able to decide who I was going to be — right?

Wrong. At least, I felt like some people thought so.

When I was younger, they would ask me, “What are you? Canadian or Chinese?”

I couldn’t answer, because no answer would have been true. Even a conciliatory reply — “Both!” — felt like a stifling blow to my true identity, the one I had painstakingly constructed with my free will, independent of the circumstances that surrounded my birth.

After an enormous amount of soul-searching, I realized that the entire world was my cultural home, and proudly gave this answer to the relentless questioners who were perennially present — indiscreet acquaintances, parents of friends, strangers I had just met (!).

It was my truth, after all. Far from satisfying their curiosity, however, it just confused them further. They wouldn’t let it go, the most obnoxious among them insisting, “But you have to choose!” “You have to belong to a culture!”

I stayed calm, but I was furious: Who were they to tell me who to be? Didn’t they know I had free will? Who did they think they were, going around telling people what their identity should be? The International Police Corps of Cultural Identity Regulation?

In retrospect, I realize these people just needed to shove me into a narrow box to fit their description of the world. Someone like me who had a cultural identity that defied easy classification made them uncomfortable. But at that moment, I just wanted to wring their necks for refusing to acknowledge who I was.

As I got older, I learned to ignore such people, and they faded to the status of inconsequential, static background noise. I enjoyed travelling, and went out of my way to meet new people and discover cultures that were unfamiliar to me. It was on one of those adventures that I met Emerald and Irina.

Both were daughters of parents who worked in American diplomatic circles, and changed their address almost every year, subject to the vagaries of their parents’ jobs. They had just concluded a two-year stay in Naples when I met them on the deck of a cruise ship in the middle of the Baltic Sea. Their international upbringing has given them a unique perspective on the world’s cultures, and they perfectly understand what it means to call much of the planet your home.

In a single conversation, they string together references spanning diverse parts of the world as if it is the most natural thing to do, which for them it probably is.

I am grateful to have them as friends now, and I incorporate a little of their international vision of life into my own cultural identity.

As the world surges into the 21st century at the speed of light, globalization is becoming an inevitable fact of life. So, let’s make the entire Earth with all of its vibrant cultures our home.

It’s the only home we have.

After an enormous amount of soul-searching, I realized that the entire world was my cultural home ... It was my truth, after all.