- There are absolutely no road signs in Toronto and the ones they do have are of essentially no use.
- Canadians (or at least those in Toronto) are not nearly as friendly as American stereotypes make them out to be, although I'm sure many are very friendly, given it's a city of about 3 million people. But people definitely do not just approach you to tell you how fabulous and beautiful you are. Trust me, I was trying to telepathically get at least one Canadian to do so. It didn't happen.
- It's really hard to get past being judgmental of things you're not used to, but once you do, you realize what you've been missing out on.
When I was a kid, I knew I was a New Yorker. What I thought being a "New Yorker" meant when I was young was wearing high heels, walking really forcefully through people, and glaring at virtually everyone. I actually kind of wanted to be hated/feared because that's what I thought it meant to be a "true New Yorker".
Maybe that definition is true for some New Yorkers. But what I've realized a major problem is, is that we all seem to need to define people. A Canadian must be nice, a New Yorker must be jaded, a Californian must be laid back, an Indian must like spicy food, a Jamaican must smoke weed, etc etc.
And although the stereotypes themselves are part of the problem, I think the fact that we need to be defined as something also has some negative effects. I don't like putting labels or definitions on people because it seems more like a limitation than anything else. I don't think there's any real way to rid ourselves of stereotypes until we rid ourselves of definitions. It's the same problem we see with "dash Americans". Once you're Indian-American or African-American or what have you, you create a separation between yourself and other people and you corner yourself into being defined as just that.
Sure, there is also an element of unity through labels. But it's the same element of unity that you see in the grocery store where all the tomato sauces are in one place, all the Hershey's chocolate bars are in one place, and the orange juice is in another place. But the food in the grocery store has nothing to gain by being placed next to un-like things. We do.
We have so much we can potentially learn about other people's cultures and the way they do things, if we stopped saying that is the "American way" of doing things, or the "Canadian way" or whatever it is. It seems that we are resistant to change because we don't want a new normal. We just want our plain old regular normal. Which is natural, change should make you feel at least slightly uncomfortable. But just because we feel uneasy about something at first does not mean we are incapable of adjusting to it. Humans for our entire existence have been adjusting to change because we have to in order to survive. We adapt and we become more efficient by learning from each other, not by shunning other people's methods and ideas.
When we were in Canada, some Canadians we ran into were surprised to hear we were from the US because we seemed like Canadians because we were friendly and easy to talk to. Which kind of makes you think, how many people in this world think Americans are unapproachable and close minded simply because we're American? A lot, I'm sure. And what other parts of ourselves, what other defining elements make other people assume that we're something when we're not?
Maybe it's just me, but I see no real benefit in telling people my ethnicity or where I'm from. All it does is allow people to create opinions of me before even getting to know me. "She's Indian, she must be stingy with money" or "She's Indian, she must be very smart and good at math" whatever it is you're saying, if you want to form an opinion about me, then why not just ask? All I know is that I'm a citizen of this world and I know that these borders we created have caused nothing but tension. The India-Pakistan border is the most highly patrolled and most tense border in the world. Why? Pakistan used to be part of India. We all used to identify as the same people, maybe not totally peacefully, I acknowledge that. But doesn't it seem a little close minded to draw imaginary lines through the sand because we can't get along? Weren't we taught at some point in like...kindergarten that we have to at least tolerate each other?
It seems especially today with all that's happening in the world, we pass along through generations reasons to hate a certain people. And it gets to a point, if it hasn't already, where we can't remember why we hate each other, we just know that we do and we find new reasons to hate. It seems to me, that we look for differences more than we look for similarities. And we waste all this energy, human potential, and resources just to generate hate, a useless emotion if you ask me, which really only generates more hate. I know it's not easy to love. Hell, it's not even easy to like a person sometimes. But I think we should at least try to remember a few things:
I'm human. You're human. I feel pain. You feel pain. We both just want to live and breathe and not worry about dying because you hate me or because I hate you.
Maybe it's too much to ask for, in a world where we have the weaponry to blow up the entire Earth five times. But I do believe that years down the line when we're all sick of being defined, marginalized, or killed because of imaginary lines drawn on maps, we'll realize we're nothing more than human. Or maybe the time will come when everyone's backgrounds are so blended and we can't tell who comes from where, maybe it'll be then. I don't know, I can only hope that we are not defined by where we come from or where our parents come from. We are defined by what we do, how we choose to treat each other, and our capacity to tolerate if not love.
Nothing but good vibes and lots of love as always,
Priya
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