1. Many people question the stability of international marriages. This has always puzzled me, because if you stop to think about divorce in the US for a moment, you will recall that most of the marriages that break up are between native-born Americans. Certainly, I am not aware of any statistics showing a higher propensity to divorce in bi-national marriages than in the more conventional sort. I seriously doubt that there is any meaningful relation between marital instability and differences in nationality inside marriages.
2. During each of these passages, how we feel about our way of living will undergo subtle changes in four areas of perception. One is the interior sense of self in relation to others. A second is the proportion of safeness to danger we feel in our lives. A third is our perception of time. Last, there will be some shift at the gut level in our sense of aliveness or stagnation. These are the hazy sensations that compose the background tone of living and shape the decisions on which we take actions.
3. There are lots of reasons to be concerned. When leading policy-makers and economists speak about the booming global economy and the benefits of free trade, they too often ignore the people who are losing out. The CEOs of Microsoft and Boeing, co-chairs of the Seattle Host Committee for the WTO meeting, are among the winners. But the form of globalization has increased the gap between rich and poor nations.
