For those that have followed my blog for a while, you'll remember a few earlier posts on barriers (pts 1-5). For those that haven't followed from the beginning, it'll make more sense if you go through the other parts first, but the brief background is this: I spent a weekend in Bo Kaap, a neighborhood in Cape Town, South Africa (this was actually almost exactly a year ago now). When I returned to Stellenbosch (the city I was studying in last July-November) I reflected a bit on the idea of cultural barriers and wrote down my thoughts. This is the final installment of the essay:
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| A child from the Pebbles Project wearing my sunglasses near Stellnbosch, South Africa |
As I was hinting at with
sunglasses, we each have emotional barriers. These are perhaps the most
powerful of all. While it is possible to break any physical barrier with the
use of physical force which anyone can apply, it is not so easy to break
emotional barriers. Under this term “emotional” lies the broad spectrum of
cultural and personal emotions. These are barriers that cannot be seen so
easily as a wall or a door, but to the trained eye are more evident and perhaps
even more potent.
Cultural barriers are, technically
speaking, cultural differences. They may include simple things to grasp such as
language or food, but they certainly include much harder aspects that can
hardly be described. As proof of this, think about the United States. Take
someone from San Francisco and someone from Los Angeles. These two individuals
will have virtually the same language and same accent, yet culturally, they
come from very different ways of life. While they both may have the
Californianess in them, the one from San Francisco will likely be more laid
back, and I dare to stereotype and say more hippie. The one from Los Angeles
will likely be in a rush to get somewhere and not be pleased that you have
taken more than two seconds of his time without having any connections to the
Hollywood industry. It is not completely impossible to overcome cultural
barriers, but it is nearly impossible to fully assimilate into a culture that
is not your own. This is because there is so much memory and history derived in
a culture that cannot be taken away from a person trying to leave a culture.
Nor can a new culture be fully understood if a person has other memories and
histories that contradict the new ones. In this way, over time, all cultures
are lost to changing peoples, but also new cultures are developed. In order for
a person to have any hope of learning a new culture, he must immerse himself in
it firsthand. Otherwise he will miss out on the many indescribable intricacies
that make a culture unique.
Personal emotional barriers are yet
the hardest to cross or understand. Each individual has his or her own barrier
that only he or she can control. It is a barrier without doors, but with many
windows. Over each of these windows we choose when to draw the curtain.
Sometimes we only draw the curtain part way and sometimes there are blinds
instead of a curtain. With practice you can learn to see through the windows of
a person’s emotions, but you can never fully understand them. Just like
culturally we each have different histories and memories, personally we each
have different histories and memories. Even siblings have different
experiences. We can teach others what makes us tick, and they may get what we
are trying to communicate, but they can never fully understand. Some people
have a barrier that is extra thick. They do not let anyone see through and this
closes them off from the world. Others have barriers that are virtually all
window with curtain drawn open. Some people have barriers that are shattered
and have to be rebuilt. Some see their barriers start to shatter and so they
fortify it, and in doing so shut out the outside world. Again, I am now going
to ask you to observe and think. What can you see for barriers in the people
around you? How about in yourself? What do these barriers mean? You may be
surprised what you find you project and what others project when you really
think about it. But then, thinking about it will also give you greater
understanding and respect for not only those around you, but also for yourself.
