Personality or Nationality

     We have been fortunate to have the means and opportunity to travel, which has opened us up to new and exciting things.  One thing I have noticed is people are not as you expect.  We all have preconceived ideas of others, which is many times based on nothing factual.  Our society tends to place nationalities in to general categories, such as Irish are drunks, Jewish are cheap, Polish are dim-witted, French are snobs, Americans are obnoxious, Muslims are terrorists, etc. but these are unfair analogies.  There may be people in those nationalities that fit those descriptions but that's their personality it's not because of their nationality.

     Let me describe a recent example, we just returned from a trip in Spain & France and we had always been told that the French are a snobbish people that don't like Americans.  That was not at all the case; we found the French were funny, friendly and helpful even though we only spoke a few words of their language.  I only remember one Frenchman that seemed to be a little arrogant but you will find arrogant people in any country, so it's not fair to write off a whole nationality because you may have run into one unpleasant individual.

     The fact is we find friendly people all over this planet.  We have not been to every country but we have met people from many nations (Palestine, England, Asia, Germany, etc.) traveling just as we have and rarely meet someone that is unpleasant.  But if that happens I will judge it to be their personality not their nationality. Are we just lucky to find all these friendly people?  I don't know, maybe that's what we expect so that's what we subconsciously look for in people.

     Maybe if we expect the best in others we will get a more positive response from others but even if you don't, it's best to chalk it up to personality not nationality.  "Just Saying..."