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In a Strange Land
A Brick on the Head
By Larry J. Pitman

You are walking by a building and someone drops a brick on your head. No one is around. You rub your head and walk on. The next day you are walking by the very same building and another brick drops on your head. Question: how often do you have to do this until you learn that you should not walk by this building?

Actually I have never had a brick drop on my head. But I have had a lot of things happen in my life that are similar. Something happens. Or maybe somebody says something. When I look back on these situations, I can see that in many cases, I reacted the same way over and over.

Well, I am not happy. That brick keeps falling on my head and it hurts. I can either say that I will tolerate the pain, or I need to make a change. I can choose my response.

Holistic healer Deepak Chopra has written: "If you step back for a minute and witness the choices you are making as you make the choices, then in just this act of witnessing, you take the whole process from the unconscious realm into the conscious realm. This procedure of conscious choice making and witnessing is very empowering.”

I would take it a step further. We need to witness the choices and, when necessary for our happiness and the happiness of others, choose to do something differently.

When we live in another culture, it is often necessary to learn from our experiences to make changes if we want to live happy lives and not make those around us miserable. Those changes often involve responses we made to situations in our original culture that we still retain now that we are in a new one. How we learned to respond in our original culture may not be appropriate now. You can change or you can suffer. In the case of something in the new culture that really bothers you, this is a serious challenge.

One example of a cultural difference is the practice of arriving at a particular point at an agreed on time. This is something we Americans tend to view as very important. If I say that I will be at a place at a particular time, I will do everything possible to fulfill that commitment.

If I have an appointment with another, I expect that person to be on time. Others coming from a different culture may not hold this value.

We can choose to become angry about this situation or we can make a change. We do not have to view tardiness as a personal insult as we often do in the American culture. We can use the time while we are waiting to read a book, have a chat, or look at a flower. We can let go of the feeling of judgment that comes with the situation. Forgive and relax. This is a change of attitude that may also add some time to our lives.

We can learn from our experiences, both happy and sad. We can make changes, and we can live better lives because of this George Bernhard Shaw once wrote, "Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience." The challenge is to know how to learn from your experiences and to put that knowledge into action. In other words, we can choose to do it differently.

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