Some of us were born and raised in the same place and have lived there our entire lives. Others are privileged to travel and live in different places around the world.
Often when one goes to a completely different land, it’s common to experience culture shock from observing things and behaviors that are completely unfamiliar to us. I’m actually visiting Costa Rica right now and thinking of retiring here.
But I’ve noticed that we can actually have regional culture shock.
One example of this can be experienced at home by watching The Real Housewives series from one area to another on Bravo. Even though New Jersey and New York are so close together, the behavior of the women in the two different areas is dramatically different. The same is true between Orange County and Beverly Hills. Watching the drama from week-to-week is something that we can see without traveling to another area and what has led to the success of the TV franchise.
I grew up in beautiful sunny southern California and have lived within a hundred miles of where I grew up my entire life. Some of my friends have never left our hometown.
A couple of my girlfriends and I drove up north to visit a mutual friend a few years ago and up until then I wasn’t even aware of how unfriendly we are here in southern California.
We think of ourselves as easygoing and laid-back, but most of the time we don’t even know our neighbors despite how close we live to them. From my former home, I could see into the backyard of 19 families from my master bedroom. And yet I didn’t know a single one of them after living there 7 years.
On this trip up north, we’re driving down the street to get to a friends house and some people we’re walking down the street. They waved at us, which is quite friendly but we assumed that they thought we were somebody else. As we went a little further down the street, somebody else waved at us and we were shocked to realize that people were simply that friendly in that area.
I’ve pondered this for a while that idea of being surprised by friendliness. But it’s something that we just don’t experience here in southern California. When we walk down the street and someone is coming toward us from the opposite direction, we don’t say hello we don’t smile, we turn our face and pretend that we don’t see them.
The situation with unfriendliness is so bad in California that one church I went to paid $10,000 to have a consultant come in and train the people in the hundred person church to smile and greet newcomers.
I had been pondering on minor regional cultural differences like this when I heard a story that made me laugh so hard I nearly cried.
My daughter is in the process of moving to Texas and someone had just told her this story. It was about a gentleman who moved from Texas to California. He was anxious to meet his neighbors so he had a barbecue. He spent a lot of money and cooked a lot of food and was very disappointed that nobody showed up.
A few weeks later he decided to try again. He bought more meat and had another barbecue, but again nobody came. He was surprised, hurt, and disappointed as he shared the story with his new friend at work.
“What do you mean no body showed up? How many people did you invite?” asked the man from work.
“Invite?” asked the Texan with his thick Southern drawl. “What do you mean invite? In Texas we just put the meat on the BBQ and the neighbors just start coming over with their side dishes!”
As Mahatma Gandhi said, “be the change in the world that you want to see.”
And so, I’ve made it a mission to start forcing myself to say hello. Actually, I started out just trying to smile, but it was almost impossible because they wouldn’t look at you to receive the smile. I really think that this is a sad thing and would love to be a part of changing that.
Tell me a story in the comment box below about something that you’ve noticed that was different when you went from one area to another.
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