Simply Nirvana

Chris Guillebeau regularly serves up inspired blogging in his Art of Non-Conformity: Unconventional Strategies for Life, Work and Travel website. From today’s entry:

Second, learn to accept that not everyone has the same logic as you.

You might assume that logic is universal, since it is supposedly based on facts instead of opinions. But you would be wrong, as travelers inevitably discover, and the sooner you learn that logic is inseparably tied to culture and context, the easier your journeys will be.

In some countries people will give you the wrong directions to a place rather than tell you they don’t know how to get there. Does this make sense to you? To me, it doesn’t. If I don’t know how to help someone, that’s what I’ll say. But not everyone thinks like me, and in some cultures, it is embarrassing to say you can’t help someone, so better to give the wrong answer than none at all. [I’m thinking, “World Bank.”]

Speaking of help, in some cases people will offer to help you because they want something from you; other times people will go far out of their way to help you while repeatedly refusing any reward. In some cases you may think a problem is small only to find out it is insurmountable (and naturally, the opposite is true). In some cases “no” means “ask three times first.”

How do you learn to interpret different situations and relate them to what is true to you? Well, experience is the best teacher. Unlike waiting, interpreting culture does get easier over time. But first you must understand that logic is hardly scientific.