A Cosmopolitan, please!

When I ordered my first Cosmopolitan cocktail in Manhattan on a Saturday night, and savored the first sips of my meticulously decorated Martini drink I felt Cosmopolitanism in my veins. Here I am, I thought, in the middle of this hip little arty lounge in downtown New York, packed with people apparently from all around the world and it really doesn’t matter where everyone comes from. Or does it…? The question kept bugging me until, in the form of an assigned reading and a deus ex machina, the issue of world citizenship banged on my naïve head that presumed that the idea of global identity is inextricably connected to metropolises like New York, Paris or London and internationally standardized Martini cocktails.
Strikingly enough, the Stoics waaay back in time have already philosophized about Cosmopolitanism, so there’s nothing new under the sun (except for the loungy ambiance, maybe.) Though for them it had less to do with obnoxiously tall skyscrapers, jetsetters and a globalization than with the universalizability of values, allegiance to the world and an equal regard of people, all of which I bluntly believe in. Having spent all but three weeks of this year away from home I am slowly acquiring an international identity which, weird as it might seem , has nothing to do with the deep devotion to the homeland I come from. Anyone who has ever heard me talking about Budapest, Tokaj wines, or Hungarian history can prove this here. I never felt that the miles I have behind me pushed me further away from the land of my birth.
On the contrary: I regard myself more and more as a Cosmopolitan Patriot, one who feels equally at home in her own society and in other societies but who, at the same time is rooted in a specific national context. To have a global perspective, you need the local perspective, which is why I consider myself exceptionally fortunate to have the opportunity to be totally immersed in a different society and which is why it is exceptionally regrettable that the majority of Americans don’t even have a passport. New York, in this respect is definitely not representative of the US: here, most people either just arrived, are just temporarily here, or on their way somewhere else.
Finishing the last sips of my well-prepared cocktail, as I looked around in the bustling bar, I saw rooted Cosmopolitans and rootless Cosmopolitans. For some, it didn’t matter where they came from, for others it very much did. I am inclined to belong to the former group and I don’t think it makes me less of a New Yorker.