People and Cultures

I had a colleague from Beijing a while ago with who I went to dinner. In a way this post was inspired by her interest (seemingly) in my writing. As we were having dinner and chatting about several different things (typical dinner conversation), I asked her a very regular and simple question. ‘What do you do over the weekend back in Beijing?’ She immediately laughed aloud and said ‘Sleep as much as I can!’ It was funny of course, only mildly because that is exactly how I would describe my weekends. Another colleague from England was about to go off camping with her team and was sharing her anxiety about how overnight trips make her wonder about what she should be wearing to bed when she is with a bunch of people she is not so familiar with, how she would go about her morning routine, etc. And, I guess many of us can identify with that. Nothing unusual there! I have colleagues from both the East and the West who share such simple woes about traffic, weather, bringing up children, spouse stories and that led to me to think how much people are similar across cultures.

One of the most interesting things about working for a global organization as mine is that I get to meet people from different cultures. I seem to think a lot about cultures and people from different cultures in the recent past. I had once upon a time thought it impossible for me to be friends with people from a different country. I am not entirely sure why I thought that way but vaguely recollect thinking that perspectives and preferences of people from different cultures are very different and it may be difficult to feel a strong bond. However, over the past few years, I have made some really good friends at work and they happen to be from a different country. I also see more and more that strong bonds are often forged more by how much I connect with a person in terms of their interests, values and beliefs. Values like how one looks at life as a continuous journey of learning and interests like reading. And these I have seen have no cultural boundaries. People are separated by distances but the ‘human being’ is a basic species (in more common lingo – a template) that is just customized based on situations and experiences. And often, given the dwindling distances and fast disappearing boundaries due to globalization facilitated by the Web 2.0 wave, these situations and experiences are becoming similar. Not only did this colleague from Beijing have a recognizable weekend hobby, she also shared the same traffic woes that I have living in Chennai. These may be small things and I am by no means a globe trotter but these are strong tell tale signs ( at least for me) that it is only people that make up cultures and not cultures that make up people. Of course, it depends a lot on the type of people. People who will let influences and incidents take over their ability to reason and re-think their choice could well make up cultures that some of us cannot identify with.

Image sources: http://www.beijingolympicsfan.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/wi-fi-beijing.jpg; http://www.masksoftheworld.com/images/Korean-Wood-Mask-a.jpg; http://www.topnews.in/files/british-flag.jpg