Journal #23

Today the discussion we had about putting certain labels on situations/people/etc changes our perspective. It is interesting to think how we put certain labels on things without necessarily knowing it. For example, while I was in Chile on my mission I was teaching English to a group of people and I was the only North American in the room. Somehow we got onto the topic of continents and I mentioned something about 1 of the 7 continents. Everyone in the room starting laughing and asking me how many continents there were. I told them that there were 7 and they laughed even more. Apparently in South America, it is taught that there are 5 continents. Now at that time my immediate reaction was defensive, I had always been taught that there were 7 continents, not 5...THEY were wrong not me. I even got so defensive about it I had my mom look it up for me to see where in the world they teach that there are 5 continents instead of 7 (to see which was the more popular). Looking back on this experience, I overreacted (obviously) but I was also not thinking correctly about the situation. Our idea of a continent in the US is obviously different than the idea of a continent in South America, we put a different meaning on the same word. One is not necessarily "right" and the other "wrong" but they are different. Now hopefully if I encounter a similar situation while in India I will react differently, knowing that large differences on the surface of a problem are the product of different cultural ideas and beliefs.