The whole world is mine!

By Ahmet Abdulaziz ……

Migration of people from one place to another is a historical fact which throughout known history, has never stopped.

Though the reasons and facts do differ from time to time, from person to person, the fact remains that this trend has continued in the past, and will continue in the future.

There are too many varying reasons for migration, differing from person to person, but each of them has got something in mind which forces them to migrate from the place where they were born, and spent a part of their lives.

The majority of the immigrants world over migrate in search of something better. This something differs from person to person. Some migrate in search of better financial prospects, whereas some migrate to save their lives from wars etc.

They all leave their homelands due to one reason or another, some of them return back but most settle in the migrated country, and ultimately make it their home. The new country where they had settled ultimately becomes the homeland of their next generations, out of which some once again decide to leave their homeland and migrate to some other place. This is the chain of migration that’s going on and on.

There are some immigrants who fail to settle in the new country due to one or more reasons. However, the most common reason is that they constantly consider their migration as a temporary phase of their lives, and believe in returning back to their homeland after sometime. In most of the cases this dream of theirs fails to become a reality. This mentality ultimately affects their next generation who too fail to settle in either of the countries, if they ultimately return back to the homeland of their parents.

There are, however, some who migrate just for the sake of some adventure, leaving behind everything and starting everything again from scratch. They try to settle in, by developing a closer understanding with the local people, by adapting to their culture and more important their language. I personally consider such people as real immigrants, because they love their new country for the sake of loving it. Such sort of immigrants get a better reception in their new home country and their next generation grow up with a totally molded social character.

I personally believe in migration of human beings. Rather in free movement of human beings over the globe. My late father used to say that the whole world belongs to human beings, and there was no sense in remain stuck to one place just because of being born there.

I always believed in this theory. In fact it is our family history.  As told, our great great great forefathers had migrated from Arabia to India, some 600 or 700 years ago. My parents and grandparents left their birthplace and migrated from India to Pakistan in 1947, to re-start their lives from scratch. Three of us four brothers and sisters, left our places of birth and  settled in different countries, physically far away from each other.

Our next generations may decide to move to some other places, and I would be pleased to see them spreading away, to prove that the whole world belongs to humans.

But given the present day conditions it is not so easy to migrate from one country to another. There are too many hurdles that force many to believe that the whole world is not theirs. But I still believe that the whole world is mine. I believe that international boundaries are just on paper. Free movement of human beings around the world is my dream.

I think John Lennon has described my dream in the song “Imagine”:

Imagine there’s no countries,
It isn’t hard to do,
Nothing to kill or die for,