Yesterday I wrote about one aspect, or rather just one small section, of the book I just finished reading, “Travels with Herodotus”. Today I go back to the book, but in a more general sense. Ryszard, the author, talks about Herodotus and how 2500 years ago, he had the tenacity, the curiosity, to pick up and travel to the ends of his known world, to preserve history in a sense, by listening to the stories that inhabitants of those lands shared with him. The known world to him at that time reached from North Africa to Southern Europe and as far west as India. China, Northern Europe, the Americas, even southern Africa, did not exist for Herodotus. There either weren’t reports of them at all, or if there were, they were so few and far between that they might as well not have existed. In Herodotus’ travels, he encounters varied tribes with a multitude of languages, but somehow manages to hear their stories, most likely through an interpreter. In his own way, he broke down barriers to those tribes, by exposing them to the knowledge that there were people who looked just like them living far away, in similar fashions to the way they lived, albeit with different customs. Herodotus speaks of those varied customs, not in a demeaning way, but in a factual sense. That is just how certain people behaved and carried out their lives. I’m sure that by exposing himself to such a kaleidoscope of humanity, he came to see the common threads that ran through the different tribes, uniting them as humans, even if they looked and acted differently and spoke different languages.
Today we are graced with the ability to travel to all ends of the known world, to experience a variety of different lifestyles, customs, traditions, and norms. We are even able to break the language barriers in most places through the use of translation devices right on our phones. We have access to thousands of books published by authors in almost every country. Yet, how often do we stray beyond our comfort zone, or our comfort area? Do we talk to strangers when we travel or stick to our tight knit travel group? What about experiencing books written by a foreign author? When was the last time we stepped outside our comfort zone and sought to learn about someone else and their life? If we just stay within our comfort zone, everyone else outside of it will take on the veil of “others” or people who are not like us, do not fit within our mold, or within the realm of our understanding. I spoke yesterday of tearing down walls. The most efficient way to do that is to learn about other people and other cultures, to become familiar with them and see that as humans, we share similar emotions and struggles regardless of where we live or who we interact with. Once we start seeing our shared humanity, the “other” factor starts to dissipate, they become less threatening to us because have come to understand them, to see things from their point of view. How many times have we judged before attempting to understand?
I find that the more I seek to learn about others, regardless of if they are foreign or just a new person I run into, the more I become tolerant of anyone who is different than me. I see humanity more easily in everyone around me knowing that we all struggle with something and we all have families and lives that are our own histories. If we can come to view others as less threatening, we can go a long ways to heal the broken bonds of humanity. But it takes effort and its not always easy. It sometimes means taking the first step and asking a question, sometimes breaking the ice by being the first one to talk. When we were in Maine back in June, there was an afternoon in the pool where I watched my daughter and another girl her age playing in the water but separate from each other. They would periodically glance at each other across the pool, but neither made a move to introduce themselves to the other. Finally, I called my daughter over and suggested she go and introduce herself, maybe she would have someone to play with. The worst she would get would be a no, or something else, we would be gone in a few days anyway, and life would move on. She hemmed and hawed for a few minutes before she finally went over and introduced herself to the other girl and asked if she would like to hang out later. It turned out that the girl was leaving that night, but at least the ice was broken and the potential was there for a friendship, however brief it would last, to be born. She had taken the first step and broke the ice.
All we have to do is take that first step, speak the first word, and then listen and talk. That is the key to ridding ourselves of “others” and forge new bonds amongst strangers, however brief and fleeting they may be. Every time we do that, our own walls get torn down just a little more and the richness of our experiences will soar.
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