The Blogger and the Grocery Store Clerk
I mused over social networks - online and offline - here and then today The Wall Street Journal has an excellent coverage on the content bloggers are sharing with all of us called "The Minutes of Our Lives" here. To summarize it in a line, the article talks about the extremely private moments people are sharing with everyone - from the birth of their child, thanksgiving evenings with family to their mundane moments at home to the growing role of narcissism.
I can not help but notice a phenomenal paradox of our (now that I am American!) society that ties in with some observations (only) I had when I arrived in the US. These were the most prominent for me:
- People were extremely guarded and private about their lives
- My neighbors did not seem to know each other
- Families were not tightly integrated
- People were (and are) sensitive to personal questions that were very commonly asked in India
- I came across more people that were lonely
- I came across more people that were alone
- You never showed up without prior notice at someone's place
- Grocery store clerks or often people at public places would share very private things with a stranger like me
Imagine: Empowering Relationships
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You know, I used to teach ESL at a university, and at the end of my students' first semester or year here, I would ask them to write an essay detailing some of the images and stereotypes of Americans they came to the US with and how it compared or contrasted (sounds very college-level, right? comparing and contrasting!) with their actual experiences. I would have liked to have had you in class and read your essay on the subject. Those essays always made for very interesting reading--they ranged from, "I thought all the girls would look like Julia Roberts...but they really don't" to "I thought Americans really cared about everything, but then when you talk to them individually, they are totally apathetic."
Anyway, your observations on American and citizenhood are very interesting to me (being an American and also being married to a non-American). It's very difficult for me to imagine giving my citizenship, not because I'm patriotic, but because it seems...just...weird. Thanks for writing about it.
My pleasure and these are only observations - one thing I have learnt from immigrating is that there is nothing really right or wrong. As far as citizenship goes, I see nationality (just like race, color, religion etc.) as just another way for us to "create" a rational explanation to address (create?) diversity :)