Cultural Differences
“Cultural differences are the various beliefs, behaviors, languages, practices, and expressions considered unique to members of a specific ethnicity, race, or national origin.”
When we think about cultural differences, we instantly think of this as how people behave in different countries, forgetting that these differences not only apply to different countries, it also does within ours. In the current time, its relatively easy to find people from different parts of the world living in the same neighborhood as us, having completely different practices and expressions than the ones we grew with.
Being respectful is key when interacting with other people, each one of us grows with those beliefs and behaviors, and some of them aren’t even our choice, they were part or taught to us from childhood. Respecting others and trying to understand them is the best thing we can do.
There are so many rich cultures where we can learn and explore so much about them, from their clothing styles to their amazing food, and the same goes for our own country, there is so much we can share for other people to appreciate.
One of the best examples I have in this regard comes from what I think was the best experience of my entire life. I am completely in love with South Korean culture and last year I was able to travel and spend like 10 days there, exploring all by myself. From their pop to their ancient cultures, from their food to their amazing lifestyles, almost everything amazes me. What is most interesting about this, is the fact that we are mostly different.
From never eating alone(one of South Korea’s social rules) to their insanely spicy food, from their completely silent subway to their insanely crowded places. Being from a country where all of these characteristics (some of them don’t even exist such as the subway) are completely different or don’t affect in almost any way, it can be quite shocking the first time. One with I can say I struggled the most, is eating alone. As it is pretty common for people there to eat accompanied, it was sometimes hard for me to find a place where I could eat. Mainly because restaurants are accustomed to receiving more than one person, they tend to have rules with this such as only allowing 2 or more people to eat there(I did not encounter a place where they did this but read about it before my trip so I was a bit worried but did not affect me at the end) or they offer you the option to eat the servings of 2 people, really crazy for a person like me that doesn’t eat much at all. But hey, is how they are, at the end of the day there were some places allowing 혼밥 (Honbap: Eating alone) and they were really awesome as most of the other places.
Another example comes from my day to day, when interacting with customers from different countries. We all have different ways of approaching things, some procedures we prefer, ways of sharing our ideas and we need to let others know our manners but not disregarding theirs, but also taking, acknowledging and respecting them to work together as a unit assisting each other looking to accomplish the same goal.
In a world shared by 7 billion people, it can be kind of illogical to not respect the diversity within the human race. It only shows us better and different ways to approach life and to appreciate different things from those we see day to day.