The broke cosmopolitan: my denial of everything I may or may not be

Why yes it has been a while. Hello to you kind folk.

It seems Mother is afraid I may end up a useless bum who merely calls herself a writer. So she enlisted the help of Older Brother to text a virtual kick up my backside to write something. I hoped Best Friend would understand. She laughed, quite cruelly I must say, in my face. I used every futile excuse my useless mind could come up with. I failed. I can only apologise.

I have been thinking, creating and writing things in my absence though, mostly on my commutes on the train. I love trains. They’re a way for us to be anti-social together. I have been hearing various interesting words pop up in my day to day life. And I have a task for you. Google the word ‘cosmopolitan’. Go on. I’ll wait.

Without a doubt you are now gazing at a list of results all leading to a certain magazine geared towards telling women how to live their personal lives. Also Wikipedia is happy to tell you about alcoholic beverages. Somewhere in the banality though, you should find something relevant to what I’m talking about.

I’ve also heard it called Internationalism or being a ‘citizen of the world’. See cosmopolitanism is a concept greater than the buzzword it has become and one I personally think needs revisiting. Well… it has been revisited in an idealistic sense or in the naïve lone traveller sense. And you can now get sagely advice on how not to be a complete douche to others and maybe learn a little about the world.

So I happen to have been born one place, raised in another yet natively from a third. I follow cultural trends of all three and have the accent of none. You should by now be somewhat confused of my origins. The notion of being a ‘citizen of the world’ appeals to someone like me who does nothing but cringe when faced with the question “where are you from?”

Yet should this still be something surprising? We live in a globalised world so densely connected it should by now be impossible to not know someone who mixes and matches culture, faith and language. I enjoy adopting the traits of various national identities. Yet, even in my main 3 countries I seem to be from somewhere else. And this is confusing or weird. People try to pinpoint and attach a certain country to my name.

I can’t even use the lone traveller title since I haven’t gone abroad anywhere new in years (airlines don’t accept Wallet Moths). I have always wanted to travel to add more culture and language to my itinerary. You know, to confuse people more. But I just happen to live in London for now. I’m not a patriot to any country or a nationalist. I may be cosmopolitan. You won’t catch me reading Cosmo.

Where are you from?

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