Three weeks in a foreign country is nothing compared to how much one can learn living in a new place for a much longer time. And I am talking about three weeks living almost exclusively in one city. This should be a super easy task, shouldn’t it?
We are all the time formulating criteria’s, making demands and labeling the culture around us; this is a natural state of being human, of being a rational animal, with human thumbs and a highly developed brain, we will always put preconceptions to certain people, objects, places, ways, manners, language, etc.
It’s like using labels or signs for everything: you do not need to explain ”why” or ”for what” because you already decided how something that you already defined will be identified.
You call this judgment.
Opinion is something ells. Don’t even try to say “this is my opinion bla bla bla”… Opinion is something applicable to your decisions, point of view, and choices that depend on you to exist, for example the color on the wall.
Swedes do not have the same hygienic customs that Brazilians have; Swedes don’t show the same sympathy when they great you, or the same interest in getting to know you well, or make you feel good. But hey, what then? Will you stop at that?
To see only the difference that excludes you will not help you in anything. In the end it will only make you more excluded and more distant to what they have to offer.
It has been hard not to judge.
Difficult not to label.
God is fair, humans are not.
Being like this, just, we can try to make the unusual- cruel- decision not to judge for any reason whatsoever. The maximum non-judgment. But to speak the truth: it is not possible. We will always judge. We will always speak or think something about people we haven’t even met, and thus take away a chance to get to know someone, and also for this someone to know you.
Upon such failure, we fall into disrepair when we realize that we judged wrongly. Many times we learn from this. It hurts. And it hurts well…. It is ok that we increase the pain a little in order to be the sorry martyr.
Like a lost sheep, we return to the arms of the Father, and for this, no martyrdom is necessary. Jesus demonstrates repentance of a pure heart that apologizes, and he already does it towards what is good. Not every Swede is cold. And I always liked to search for the minorities.
Because God loves us first, not least.
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This blog post is written by Thomaz Baldow one of the Exchange participants from Brazil this year – 2015. Thomaz describes himselves as a mixer of ideas and chaos that just solves everything with music, improving by God’s will and learns as a human being.
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