Just thought id post the essay i wrote for a friend which she had to submit to some university..
What did you experience when you first went abroad or visited a different culture than your own? How did you overcome the cultural differences?
My first trip abroad made me realize that You don’t have to go looking for lessons about life in sociology theses, you simply have to go around the world and explore for yourself.
Fascinating truths of life emerge when we move out of our own space to wander around. Cultural differences, language, accents, mentalities are all the minor things that we deal with; the lessons learnt are the bigger deal. From my first experience i concluded on the following
Lesson 1: Your viewpoint depends on your point of viewing.
Lesson 2: Life is a continuous battle to find your own space.
Lesson 3: Keeping an open mind is the key to forming cordial relations
My imagination out ran logic when I thought about the difference between my home and the outside world but experience taught me better. People, I realized are all the same what differs is the lifestyle but what binds us is our humanitarian nature and our innate ability to accept change and rather learn from change than resist it. It wasn’t exactly a fish out of water experience it was more like the river fry meeting the sea fish. Being a native of India where each state has its own culture and tradition it is not a task to fit in, it is rather a task to know everything one has to about his motherland which is so diverse. In PASCAL’s words “Since one cannot be universal by knowing everything that can be known about everything, it is necessary to know a little about everything.” The little we all know about all the cultures is enough to get us to converse from there on individuality takes over.
A common term we people in the east hear is “western culture”. The adults frown upon it and the adolescents thrive on it, but rather than going to the extremes the majority of the people choose the elements of the ‘western culture’ that appeal to them and same goes for the people in the west. It is the amalgamation which forms a mosaic rather than the individual dominance.
