My World, Your World

Heterogeneity is good, that much I know. Besides, could you imagine a world where everyone dressed alike, talks alike, thinks the same way? It'd be very boring, I believe. I can't think of anything more interesting than learning all kinds of cultures and ways of life--it gives color to our (my) at times mundane lives, don't you think?

That being the case, it really was a paradox when I found out that being with people who were different from me was extremely hard. It took a constant effort that it's tiring. "Different" here might mean differences in culture, interest, worldview, or even generation (well, I've always known that I'm not good at mingling with older people and kids).

Watching and listening to a variety of people as they reveal their uniqueness was an eye-opening experience and I loved it. But when the time came for me to jump in at it, I'd feel uncomfortable and awkward, big time.

It's like this: how can you relate to people when it seems like you have nothing in common? That's non sense, of course, because humans can always find something in common in one another, no matter how dissimilar they are. But what those similarities are, sometimes it's impossible to tell, and you can only scratch your head in frustration.

Like a particular scenario when I was in a place full of foreigners and someone started to tell a joke that made everyone roared with laughter. I smiled sourly; to me it was obscene, to them it was witty. How should I react in this highly uneasy situation?

And do you know what I wanted to do when things went in that direction? I wished I could just get out of this unknown territory and be with my closest people, talking about our hopes and fears, cursing the government for not doing their job well, singing our praises to that new movie, or just having some idle chatter. Does that make me a narrow-minded person? Or yet another proof that I need to improve my terrible social skill?