Purpose doesn't only come from work. The third way we can create a sense of purpose for everyone is by building community. And in our generation when we say purpose for " everyone" , we mean everyone in the world.
Quick show of hands: how many of you are from another country? Now, keep your hands up. Now, how many of you are friends with one of these folks? Now we're talking. We have grown up connected.
In recent survey of millennials around the world asking what most defines our identity, the most popular answer wasn't nationality, ethnicity or religion it was " citizen of the world" . That's a big deal.
Every generation expands the circle of people we consider " one of us" . And in our generation, that now includes the whole world.
We understand the great arc of human history bends towards people coming together in ever greater numbers -- from tribes to cities to nations -- to achieve things we couldn't on our own.
We get that our greatest opportunities are now global -- we can be the generation that ends poverty, that ends disease. We get that our greatest challenges need global responses too -- no country can fight climate change alone or prevent pandemics. Progress now requires coming together not just as cities or nations, but also as a global community.
But we live in an unstable time. There are people left behind by globalization across the world. It's tough to care about people in other places if we don't feel good about our lives here at home. There's pressure to turn inwards.
This is the struggle of our time. The forces of freedom, openness and global community against the forces of authoritarianism, isolationism and nationalism. Forces for the flow of knowledge, trade and immigration against those who would slow them down. This is not a battle of nations, it's a battle of ideas. There are people in every country for more global connection and good people against it.
This isn't going to be decided at the UN either. It's going to happen at the local level, when enough of us feel a sense of purpose and stability in our own lives that we can open up and start caring about everyone too. The best way to do that is to start building local communities right now.
We all get meaning from our communities. Whether our communities are houses or sports teams, churches or a cappella groups, they give us that sense we are part of something bigger, that we are not alone; they give us the strength to expand our horizons.
