Our global society

I've recently returned from a weekend family get-together.

It's the second time we've enjoyed something similar - a great idea as, without these weekends, the only time we'd otherwise all see each other is at a wedding or a funeral....and why wait till then?

The gathering took place in the UK, but was mainly organised by my uncle who lives in Germany. He's married to a German lady and he and his sons think nothing of travelling the globe. My uncle regularly travels to Africa in his work, one of his sons has just flown in from Australia and another has been living and working in Zimbabwe for some time.

Thinking about the far-flung places that different members of the family had travelled from made me think about the incredibly global nature of today's society.

With the technology we now have access to, we can contact people in an instant, all over the world. A sister-in-law sent me texts from her recent holiday in New Zealand, we can download information through the Internet from almost anywhere, and I can speak to and coach people living on the other side of the world.

I have subscribers to my newsletter from as far afield as Saudi Arabia, the USA, Australia, India and Fiji.

What an amazing world we live in and what a huge amount of opportunities there are - which were never available to our grandparents.

I guess it's our place to make the most of these opportunities and to look after this wonderful, yet sometimes very small, world of ours.