Boiling it Down - Part I
After working about 90hours on various projects in the US last week, I
got to drive a couple hundred miles across Texas to a client site and
to see some family (more on that later). While I am not very fond of
driving long distances (I did grow up in Switzerland where driving for
30 minutes is considered excessive), the absence of anything else to do
led to some interesting thoughts.
As you may know by now, the cultural difference between Anguilla and the US shocks me every time I travel.
In the US, people are always in a hurry, treat you like you just might cause them to get even further behind (in what I don't know) and don't seem to want to interact.
In the US, people look at you like you're nuts when you feel like dancing or singing in the middle of an airport or Starbucks, whereas that sort of thing wouldn't turn a single head on the island.
In general, the mindset towards strangers in the US is closed.
In Anguilla almost all people haven an open mindset to strangers and will help you out, such as when my wallet didn't make it to the grocery store and a stranger in line behind me offered to pay for it, without knowing who I was, where I lived or if she'd ever see that money again.
That would never happen in the US...
.... or would it?
Actually, I DO think that that happens in the US. Specifically out in the country, where there are less people and I know for a fact that in a tiny town in the middle nowhere Texas, that sort of thing DOES happen.
So if the open mindset towards strangers IS there.... then what exactly makes people be closed off to each other?
Why do people in the CITIES I travel to, make them treat each other with a closed mindset and are not only dis-interested but also regard you as someone that merely wants to get ahead of them?
As you may know by now, the cultural difference between Anguilla and the US shocks me every time I travel.
In the US, people are always in a hurry, treat you like you just might cause them to get even further behind (in what I don't know) and don't seem to want to interact.
In the US, people look at you like you're nuts when you feel like dancing or singing in the middle of an airport or Starbucks, whereas that sort of thing wouldn't turn a single head on the island.
In general, the mindset towards strangers in the US is closed.
In Anguilla almost all people haven an open mindset to strangers and will help you out, such as when my wallet didn't make it to the grocery store and a stranger in line behind me offered to pay for it, without knowing who I was, where I lived or if she'd ever see that money again.
That would never happen in the US...
.... or would it?
Actually, I DO think that that happens in the US. Specifically out in the country, where there are less people and I know for a fact that in a tiny town in the middle nowhere Texas, that sort of thing DOES happen.
So if the open mindset towards strangers IS there.... then what exactly makes people be closed off to each other?
Why do people in the CITIES I travel to, make them treat each other with a closed mindset and are not only dis-interested but also regard you as someone that merely wants to get ahead of them?
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