It’s been a lot of times in my life that I faced the problem of misunderstanding. It is usually a matter of arrogance and intolerance. People simply don’t want to empathize with the others. However there’s another important reason why we don’t understand each other. It’s either ignorance or a simple lack of information about a person, it’s world, values and interests. How are we supposed to get on well if we don’t even know each other?

Since my early childhood I met people who didn’t understand me. I believe that every sane person in this world experienced more or less the same. This is a natural process and there’s nothing to be wondered about. However I will try to find the roots of this misunderstanding. Of course there are some obvious ones which come into my mind.

For instance, if we talk about a parent/child relationship it is a classical problem of “fathers and sons”. When it comes to a romantic relationship we often mention the difference between men and women which lead to this misunderstanding. There’s nothing special that we can say about a relationship between employees of a big office. Everything is quite obvious for that matter. I’d like to talk about a more general source of misunderstanding.

I mean misunderstanding between people from different countries. This is a theme with a huge variety of reasons and combinations of reasons why we don’t understand each other’s mentality, culture, traditions. Some of them are sound and logical, some of them are merely invented by someone who doesn’t even want to try to be closer to people from other parts of the world. And once you really want to break the barrier of this misunderstanding you will have to sort them out yourself. Otherwise there’s no guarantee that you won’t be fooled by someone else’s opinion.

It’s way too may stereotypes about our country as well as about every country in the world which we are used to take as an absolute true without even thinking and measuring whether it can be true at all. If you try to learn a little bit more about my homeland you will definitely find out that we are the same people with the same values who go through the same joy and sorrow, happiness and tragedies. Sure there is a difference between us. But this difference is what making us better I believe. I see it as a perfect chance to enrich our inner world’s with each other’s traditions, distinctive cultural features, ways of thinking. To me it’s an endless source of permanent amusement rather than a reason to clash or be suspicious. I say “no” to ignorance and intolerance. I want learn from the others and let them learn from me.

What do you say? Does it make sense to you?

Maria