Eight years ago, I climbed to the top of a mountain in Costa Rica. There in a humble wooden home I met Dr. Robert Muller.
For those that don’t know the work of Dr. Muller, he was a pioneer for world peace and global education. Dr. Muller was the Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations for 40 years; Recipient of the UNESCO Peace Education Prize; Co-Founder and Chancellor Emeritus of the University for Peace in Costa Rica; and Nuclear Age Peace Foundation World Citizen honoree for 2002. In 2003 he was awarded the Goi Peace Award. (from AOND).
He invited me to join him for a coffee. I asked him many questions and one of the most fascinating conversations of my life ensued. Dr. Mueller truly and deeply thought of the world in a way that transcended borders and nations.
Long before twitter and blogs and Facebook, he would sit-down and write out an idea for world peace every day. His assistants would send it out on email lists. A book was being compiled. I still remember several of the ideas he brought up.
- Corporate executives should by be compelled to meet and make decisions in places surrounded by nature. This way as they make their big decisions they would remember the beauty and interconnectedness of the ecosystems their decisions would inevitably draw upon and effect.
- Foreign ministries should be abolished and renamed– foreign ministries imply a nation’s separation from the rest of world. Better ‘Ministry of Global Affairs’.
- Kids should all be taught in schools the place of the Earth in the Solar System.
It’s amazing how much I remember from the inspiring encounter. However, the most memorable was something else all together. After sharing some of these ideas, he looked off wistfully into the horizon. It was almost as if he was talking to himself at this point. He sighed and his Alsace-Lorren German accent, the setting sun glinting off his metal framed glades, the lush green costa rican landscape terming in the breeze, he spoke.
“There are so few humans on the planet who truly think beyond the ideas of borders and nations and geopolitical lines. But ‘think’ is the wrong word. I mean to truly know and operate and act in a way that acknowledges we’re all on a planet, and not in this hypothetical construct of ‘nations’. I am one of only a couple hundred who are thinking this way”.
For some time afterwards, his statement struck me as slightly arrogant. Surely, there were alot more people who thought of the world on a global level! Like me for example. Surely.
As the years have gone by I have reflected on this statement. And, I have seen the truth in it. To truly transcend the cumbersome and limited ideas of a world divided into nations, some richer some poorer, that we are born into in this civilizational moment is truly no easy task. If you have a chance to read about Robert’s amazing birth, childhood and life during the second world war. Robert was perhaps one the first ever citizen-less people, being born in the contested and at the time nation-less area of Alsace-Lauren. This upbringing gave him a remarkable boost to being able to think beyond borders and propelled him into his amazing career with the united nations.
Which led him to found the Universidad por la Paz in Costa Rica. And for him to settle on the top of the mountain beside it in his ‘retirement’. Some one would argue this has been his most consequential time. Like me. The Canadian expatriate who was in the foreign country of Costa Rica who walked up the mountain to meet him that fateful and infinitely inspiring day. The day, I began to climb a new mountain– to become, truly and deeply, a citizen of Planet Earth.
