I'm not feeling particularly poetic or 'writ-ey' but I had some thoughts that I wanted to share, so please bear with me through this array of in-eloquence.
Just this morning, I went to a grocery store in the heart of the city of Al-Khobar, and while everyone was rushing to get out of the store in time for prayer, there was a Saudi woman in line behind us. Behind her was an American family with two girls. As I stood there and watched everyone around me (because I love to people watch!) I noticed that the Saudi woman let the American girls go in front of her in the line, because they just had one thing to check out. Yeah, you might read this and say, "So what? things like that happen all the time" But to me it was a little surprising. In the years that I've been here, the two cultural groups seemed to have done everything in their power to pretend the other isn't there. They usually ignore each other. They usually just say something if one is in the way of the other; but this Saudi woman (who was by herself), totally let those girls go ahead. Even while shopping today at the grocery store, I could see westerners and Saudis acknowledging each other and helping each other. Nothing huge, nothing that would be noteworthy to anyone else.. but it seemed completely normal to everyone. Even as I walked down aisles looking for what I wanted, I felt this wide ambiance of 'understanding'. One was not judging the other, we just accepted that we lived different lives, and did things differently. Simple as that.
I feel that over the years, these groups of people have tried to understand each other, and because of that, the wall has been crumbling. Slowly, but surely.
Over the past month I've been pondering a lot about compassion and kindness, and I feel like my experience this morning has been exactly the closing factor of my thoughts.
Human relationships are everything. For as long as the world has existed, only within the last 200 or so years has technology boosted, as well as education. There were people at the time of Leonardo da Vinci who were set to have known everything there is to know--today, that would be impossible. But if you look throughout time and history, you can see that people still lived and had things to live for. They survived without everything we have today, so what does that tell you? The only thing that matters in this life, are your relationships with other people.
With that being said, treating people (especially strangers) with kindness is a reflection of building good relationships. Kindness is understood by every culture, every race, every people. You don't have to speak the same language as someone to help them out. In fact, I was sitting next to a Nepalese man on my last flight to Saudi who did not know a lick of English, or... how to fill out his passport form for customs. He gestured to me to help him, I took his passport, and then filled out the paperwork for him; because he was completely helpless in terms of even being able to read it.
Saudi's and westerners are tearing down their barriers, because they are showing kindness to each other. What other barriers can we tear down in our lives if we are but kind to those who are different from us, from those who see the world in a different light than us, or from those who we may not have always gotten a long with? The underlining message that I see in all of this is to love, and never stop loving; no matter your race, your culture, your differences.
If you want to obtain peace and happiness in this crazy world there is only one thing to do: Love with every chance you get. Love everything and everyone without making up excuses. Love with all of your heart.
When I moved to Saudi Arabia 11 years ago, it was a very different world than it is now. Very different. From the day I got here and most of the years I lived here, there always felt like there was an unspoken barrier between Saudis and Westerners. This barrier consisted of a wall made up of differences. Differences of one party not really wanting to understand the other one. From the westerner's who lived on my compound, I was always told things about Saudis in a negative light: "It's hard to compromise with them." "Don't argue with them, they love to argue" or "Be careful, they do whatever they want and don't care about you."
When I got to high school I had the dramatic difference of being surrounded by hardly any westerners, and heard the flip side of the comments: "White people are so uptight." "White people don't care about anyone except themselves" or "they're so close-minded, they don't want to even try to understand anyone who is different."
If you were to ask me what my biggest pet peeve is, hands down I could tell you in one word: Stereotypes.
But the point of this blog entry isn't to go off about how stereotypes are unfair, or that they categorize people without giving them a chance. No, this blog is about a beautiful thing that I've been witnessing the last few trips that I have made to Saudi: Peace, the evaporation of differences... acceptance.
Just this morning, I went to a grocery store in the heart of the city of Al-Khobar, and while everyone was rushing to get out of the store in time for prayer, there was a Saudi woman in line behind us. Behind her was an American family with two girls. As I stood there and watched everyone around me (because I love to people watch!) I noticed that the Saudi woman let the American girls go in front of her in the line, because they just had one thing to check out. Yeah, you might read this and say, "So what? things like that happen all the time" But to me it was a little surprising. In the years that I've been here, the two cultural groups seemed to have done everything in their power to pretend the other isn't there. They usually ignore each other. They usually just say something if one is in the way of the other; but this Saudi woman (who was by herself), totally let those girls go ahead. Even while shopping today at the grocery store, I could see westerners and Saudis acknowledging each other and helping each other. Nothing huge, nothing that would be noteworthy to anyone else.. but it seemed completely normal to everyone. Even as I walked down aisles looking for what I wanted, I felt this wide ambiance of 'understanding'. One was not judging the other, we just accepted that we lived different lives, and did things differently. Simple as that.
Over the past month I've been pondering a lot about compassion and kindness, and I feel like my experience this morning has been exactly the closing factor of my thoughts.
Human relationships are everything. For as long as the world has existed, only within the last 200 or so years has technology boosted, as well as education. There were people at the time of Leonardo da Vinci who were set to have known everything there is to know--today, that would be impossible. But if you look throughout time and history, you can see that people still lived and had things to live for. They survived without everything we have today, so what does that tell you? The only thing that matters in this life, are your relationships with other people.
With that being said, treating people (especially strangers) with kindness is a reflection of building good relationships. Kindness is understood by every culture, every race, every people. You don't have to speak the same language as someone to help them out. In fact, I was sitting next to a Nepalese man on my last flight to Saudi who did not know a lick of English, or... how to fill out his passport form for customs. He gestured to me to help him, I took his passport, and then filled out the paperwork for him; because he was completely helpless in terms of even being able to read it.
Saudi's and westerners are tearing down their barriers, because they are showing kindness to each other. What other barriers can we tear down in our lives if we are but kind to those who are different from us, from those who see the world in a different light than us, or from those who we may not have always gotten a long with? The underlining message that I see in all of this is to love, and never stop loving; no matter your race, your culture, your differences.
If you want to obtain peace and happiness in this crazy world there is only one thing to do: Love with every chance you get. Love everything and everyone without making up excuses. Love with all of your heart.
