I can’t remember who said it to me first. It was a long time ago, but it’s true —
There are many places on earth you can’t truly understand until they confuse you.
What it has come to mean to me is that it’s easy to sit from a distance, form an opinion about a place one has never been, and vouch for the absolute truth of your perspective. Scary/not scary; good food/bad food; good culture/bad culture; beautiful/ugly; friendly/rude, and so on.
Then you find yourself in one of those places, right in the thick of it. Dealing with the realities of the day-to-day, interacting with the people of which that place is comprised and the culture in which they live, eating the food. You discover you were slightly, moderately or completely wrong.
The place, the way of life you so clearly understood suddenly becomes confusing. That’s when actual understanding begins to dawn.
Doesn’t matter if it’s an entire country outside of one’s own or a city within one’s own country.
I come from one of those places. I’ve been to many more.
Places are made up of people. I’ve decided it’s really a statement about many people – easily understood from a distance, but complex up close. Even easier to understand when grouped and categorized, but terribly confusing when one is peeled from the pack.
I might be one of those. I definitely know many of them.
In that spirit, I plan to constantly find new confusions to entertain me.
