Why YOU do not fit in society – Explained

I’m sure you know that feeling when you don’t meet other people’s expectations. Indeed, I want to go further and make you wonder why is that we easily feel lonely when being in a foreign country. Probably, most of you have been, or are going to be, a long time abroad as Erasmus so it’s highly recommendable that we address this topic. I myself spent last year in Germany and I feel like talking about my (in)experience.

I want to begin this with social conventions. At least for me, it was quite shocking entering a new culture. For the very first time in my life I realized I had to learn how to behave, that is, I started questioning my behavior from A to Z. It was awkward, because I had never thought about it ever before. Questions like: Am I behaving properly? What do people expect from me? Do I have the same rights as those born here? Do I want to remain unnoticed? Do I want to fit in this society? What’s my nature like? Where do I belong to? What makes me happy? Which things in life do I give value to? All this questioning may seem a bit of an overreaction but I think it’s very close to what you’ll eventually face.

Since we have already dealt with this topic, it will be easier to understand how close the relation between Hofstede’s social dimensions, ethnic identity and the Brown & Levinson politeness theory is. I want to have an explanatory approach on how and why you will feel what.

From my experience I can say -and like Mariola said many times in class-, the first thing you will do when you land in a foreign country is comparing. In this stage, your brain is in a rush to classify what it’s experiencing, therefore there is a huge need of tagging everything, a huge need of finding the answer to why people behave like that, what is behind their daily decisions. At the beginning you may feel like Truman in his own show, there is a huge gap between your way and their way, you do not know what do they behave according to and one may feel quite lonely. That loneliness is caused mainly by the giant mismatch between how you expect things to be carried out and how it is really done. You try and try to understand them, but eventually you always crash into that wall, the wall you have built by your own with those tags and value judgments.

Then comes a second stage in which you begin to enjoy some aspects of the new culture but you are not convinced at all yet and it is now when you need to abandon the fear of being rejected and to try hard to get deep into the culture. I spent a lot of time reflecting on this, but I didn’t succeed and -at the end- I realized I have put too many unfair tags on those who I was living with and, actually, it was just something you have to assume without that categorizing, that is, accept that you are in another culture and it is different, do not try to compare it with one another. You’re kinda hurt in the very deep of your heart and you blame them for being like that. That’s not fair; the solution would be not to feel affected in this sense. How? Being like them, enjoying life like they do. In relation to this I find the next saying very useful: “When in Rome, do as the Romans”. Just act like them and try to fit in society.

At the end of your adventure you will miss a lot your little circle in which you feel most comfortable, but you will have learnt that it isn't that perfect as it used to be. I mean, you begin to question your own space which used to be flawless. Actually it has never been that good, but you didn't ever question it.

I have to confess that I made a big mistake and it was not taking into account these theories about national culture and politeness, because they would have saved me a lot of misconceptions and would have let me get deeper in that society. That’s why I strongly advise you to make use of them when trying to understand the culture you are living in, because they are a tool to make more accurate assumptions.

You may have thought that fitting in society is losing your personality; nothing further from reality. It does not matter how different you feel you are, you will always be able to fit into a society without losing you character, you may even expand it in certain extend.

Take this post just as a reminder when encountering different individuals around the world, take some time to reflect on what’s behind their behavior and you will make healthier assumptions than those you do automatically.

Happy afternoon :)

                                                                                                                       By Álvaro Rodríguez

                                                                                                                       EPD 11 Group 1

                                                                                                                      

Revised by Jose Mª Rosso Sánchez