Changing cultures doesn’t require tossing old friends
For five years I worked in a town north of Georgia that was so rural it couldn’t be considered suburbs to anything except mountains, skunks, and hay fields.
Life in this town south of the MasonDixon line was so different that I had to learn a new language. In addition to my Alabama jargon and my south Georgia dialect, I learned a new vernacular. One day I asked an employee to complete a task. He said, “I don’t care to do it.” Shocked and perplexed, I repeated my request and got the same answer. I thought he was saying no, but I quickly learned that he was actually saying that he didn’t mind doing it.
This town in the Central Time Zone was so close to the Eastern Time Zone that dusk seemed to come around 2:30 each winter afternoon. This is where I taught my hands to get cold. It didn’t seem to matter if I wore heavy gloves, a heavy dress coat under a wool trench coat and a heavy wool hat. My hands started getting cold around September and didn’t warm up until spring. When it snowed, it was like fluffy talcum powder that blew off the roads when cars drove by.
Lawn and garden stores closed half-day on Saturday and most stores closed half-day on Wednesday. Everyone has memories that takes them back in time now and again. Most people have dreams that take them to the future. But I didn’t have the memory, I didn’t know the future, and I didn’t have a crystal ball to know what I didn’t know.
My company hosted a cookout for many of the town’s business people where I gave a brief welcome speech then said, “Let’s eat.” After the event, my wife said she overheard several people saying, “He didn’t say a blessing.” I should have known that this rural community always said grace before a meal. That type of public religion was frowned upon in my former suburban town, but I would’ve gladly poured my heart into praying if I had understood the local culture.
My past suburban culture didn’t make me want to show contempt for my new rural culture. I had to confront my unknown and learn to control my insecurities. It wouldn’t have been different for any other newcomer because I learned that if people weren’t born in that community, they weren’t fully accepted. It would have been easier for me to stick with what I already knew, but to understand and learn the new culture was an incredible new opportunity.
I wouldn’t trade my time in this town for anything. Different people have different ways of doing things, but one way isn’t always better than the other. Likewise, because a person is accustomed to doing something one way, it doesn’t mean that another way is automatically wrong.
Getting out of a comfort zone is usually a daunting step which can bring about feelings of insecurity and uneasiness. It can also produce an unidentified fear and the loss of a familiar sanity maintaining routine. Every person reacts different when subjected to a new culture. Some people will retain their past life while others will work hard to learn something new.
If “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” then the best location is in the eye of the person looking. Anyone who enjoys their own company first has the ability to enjoy a new life.
Changing cultures doesn’t require tossing old friends, it’s just a first-class opportunity to make additional friends, accept new challenges, and possibly castoff troublesome issues. Different viewpoints, different ways to succeed and endless possibilities can accompany the change. Anyone can jump out of their old restraining skin and wobble into reinventing themselves as a new person.