How do I, or you — or, for that matter, anyone — develop global identity? Why am I so dedicated to fostering “global citizenship” and “global leadership”? And what makes me care so much about what “global” means?

To share the story of how I took the fork in the road marked “global” is not just an assignment for my mind. If it were a cerebral tale (“Oh, I received a degree in international economics …”) or a career move (“I was offered a job with the Foreign Ministry…”), perhaps I would not have been reluctant. But for me it is an intensely personal question that involves my heart more than my head.

When I was growing up in the American heartland, I appeared to be an ordinary, basketball-crazed, girl-chasing guy with an identity shaped by Washington, Wall Street and Hollywood. But, perhaps like you, seeds were already planted deep inside me that would never let me be shaped by any single culture.

I was, first of all, an immigrant. If my father, a Dutch refugee during World War II, had been accepted at a university in Cape Town or Buenos Aires or Sydney, I might be a South African, Argentinean or Aussie. He was accepted by Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where I was born. My citizenship was determined by a Nazi despot and a university admissions officer.

Unlike my friends, whose families told stories about places like Nashville and Columbus and Lexington, my parents’ conversations alluded to places with names like Rotterdam (where my Christian relatives lived) and Auschwitz (where some of my Jewish relatives were murdered) and Jogjakarta (where my mother, the daughter of Dutch missionaries, had grown up). Unlike my friends’ grandparents, who were often buried in a cemetery somewhere nearby, mine were buried across the ocean somewhere in Holland, or lost in the ashes of a Nazi incinerator.

Later in my childhood, when I met other children of newcomers to this continent, I became aware of the narrative called “immigration”. But for many years, I kept looking for the parachute that had dropped me, undamaged but unhinged, into the American Midwest.

From even my earliest years, I was aware of the “whole” of which America was only a “part”. At age seven or eight, I remember the zeal with which I learned to assemble the fifty pieces of the states of the union jigsaw puzzle. Just as I was excited to see how all these piece formed a country, so I was eager to learn how all the nations fit together to form the world.

Anyone who has reflected on his or her genealogy, or “family tree,” knows that he or she is only a twig on a branch. But for many of us, this wider awareness is dulled by the particulars of our time and place. As we grow up, we “fit in” more and more until, finally, we actually accept the identity we are given. We think of ourselves in terms of our neighborhood, or our nation, and forget that we are part of the whole.

As I look back, I realize that my greatest wound, that although I grew up in America I never felt like an American, was also my greatest gift. My gift was that, since I never felt like an American, I began very early to identify with something larger. Like Tom Paine, the American revolutionary author who wrote Common Sense, I felt that, “My country is the world. My fellow citizens are humankind.”

When I was accepted at Harvard College, I went to Cambridge keen to learn about the world. But within a couple of years, I was restless. I spent my junior year living with families and studying at universities in seven countries: Japan, India, Turkey, Israel, Yugoslavia, Sweden, and France. When I returned to Cambridge for my senior year, it no longer dazzled me with its reputation as a renowned citadel of higher education. I had found another university that I wanted to attend; the campus was the earth, and the faculty was humanity itself.

No matter how much I traveled thereafter — living in Indonesia, traveling through the Soviet Union and China, then to Nepal and Sri Lanka, and later throughout Latin America, Southeast Asia and then Africa — I was always struck by how little I knew. No matter how hard I might try, I could never learn more than three or four languages, and never understand more than a few cultures.

When I was in my late twenties, already married and the father of two sons, I was offered a dream job, researching the feasibility of a global newspaper and eventually becoming WorldPaper’s managing editor. I loved the challenge of producing a monthly publication in five languages with a circulation of over one million. It reflected the wisdom of our Associate Editors from around the world (including such giants as Mochtar Lubis from Indonesia and Hilary N’gweno from Kenya) rather than the editorial bias of New York, Moscow or Tokyo. The opportunity fueled my idealistic dream that I could make a living and a life as a citizen of the world.

I have never let go of this dream. Whether it was bringing Soviet and American filmmakers together to end the Cold War on the big screen, or the World Economic Forum and World Social forum together to dialogue about their differences and their common goals, I have always tried to see the world as one. For several years I have been studying leaders who have been effective at crossing national, ideological, cultural and ethnic borders. These remarkable people, whom I call “leaders beyond borders,” are the forerunners of the just, sustainable global civilization that is shimmering on the horizon.

To help bring this vision into reality, I formed a global network of similar souls. Our twenty-person network is now working together on a book, workshops, and other projects dedicated to developing the capacity for “global leadership” and “global citizenship”. Our shared dream is to catalyze global schools, global companies, and global institutions of governance that honor the spirit of millions of human beings who know that, no matter where they live, their country is the world.

As evidenced by wars being waged in my name I have learned that it is not easy to honor my allegiance to the planet when citizenship is still determined by nation states. Human beings have divided the whole into parts, and now the parts are competing for control. Even if I want to be a citizen of the whole, the parts have, for the moment, made that impossible. No matter how much I may want to carry a global passport, mine is still stamped in Washington, D.C. No matter how much I may want to receive my news each morning from a global newspaper, I still have to choose among news sources dominated by single nations or cultures. No matter how much I may want my children to receive a global education, they still are caught in a system that is shaped by a single nation’s government. In other words, although I may be a global citizen in my heart I am legally an American.

Although I love my country deeply, I am like a young man who finally leaves home and falls in love with a woman. My love for my mother country has been transcended by another greater and more mature love. Yes, I am devoted to my country when it serves the larger world, but I will be critical of my country when it does not. My loyalty is to humanity’s welfare not just my neighbors’. My passion is for universal not just national values. My faith is in a diverse and global multiculture. If I risk my life in battle, it will be serving in a global peacekeeping force, not the US army. And if I ever choose again to put my hand over my heart and say a pledge of allegiance, it will be to the emerging family of nations that comprise this fragile world.

I am now past the halfway point in my life. I am prepared to live and die suspended between my national origins and my global identity. But, I refuse to feel alone, or to remain silent, or to pretend to be what I am not. We global citizens do not own a single plot of global land. We global citizens do not have a truly global bank or a genuinely global newspaper or even a global university. We global citizens cannot cast a single global vote. We are and will remain refugees on this planet unless and until we come together and say in unison: “We will be divided no more.” Is this a call to revolution? No. Do I have a master plan? Hardly. All I have is a plaintive cry in my heart for a world without borders. All I want is a place where people like us — the hyphens, the border-crossers, the “third-culture kids,” the ones who refuse to live inside the boxes of their countries — can stand on this planet, not in this country or that. If you have this cry in your heart too, then let the world hear it. If our voices form a global chorus, it can change the world.

Mark Gerzon is the President of Mediators Foundation and the founder of the Global Leadership Network. Currently working with UNDP on developing a global learning community on dialogue, he facilitated the first two Bipartisan Congressional Retreats and has designed several other dialogues between Republicans and Democrats in the US House and Senate as well as the State of the World Forum Conferences. He also organized one of the first dialogues between the World Economic Forum (Davos) and World Social Forum (Porto Alegre). Among his several published books is the forthcoming Leading Beyond Borders: Tools for Transforming Conflict into Synergy.