I had a moment of insight recently while on the phone with my oldest friend. The conversation addressed a conflict between people who have known each other for a very long time, do not see similarly on many issues, and have found themselves unable to communicate with one another. As we talked, I thought about the communication challenges I’ve been navigating in an increasingly deep way. My partner and I come from different cultures that are steeped in different styles of communication, express ourselves most easily in different languages, and have different levels of proficiency in each other’s first language. As with anyone building a life together, it makes sense that we will have conflicts; considering our backgrounds, it also makes sense that areas of our conflicts will be due to cultural or linguistic differences. What has surprised me is how often this is the case, especially in situations where “cultural differences” seems the least likely culprit.

Could it also be the case that people who grew up in the same culture, were raised in a similar manner, and speak the same language can experience intercultural conflict?

I listened to one side of the story, thought back to what I’d previously heard from the other party involved, and realized I was hearing much the same from both sides. There was hurt, abandonment, lack of support, lack of understanding. There was frustration and anger, there was a desire to end the conflict, there was the helplessness of not knowing how to move forward, the sorrow of making decisions that were deemed necessary but also clearly hurtful.

Most significantly, I heard, “I’m sure they think they’re doing X but they’re actually doing Y. They just don’t understand.”

This brought me to the challenges I have experienced in intercultural communication. It is not uncommon that either my partner or I will do X and the other will interpret it as Y. And then when we try to talk about X or Y, it becomes clear that we’re not talking about the same thing because we didn’t experience or interpret the event in the same way. While this is likely often the case in relationships, I find that we often get into a discussion of language, tone, or expectation, all of which run far deeper than the event itself. In the end, it’s the deeper aspect we discuss, navigating through that how we want to be with one another.

So I wondered if maybe this was happening with my oldest friend. I wondered if maybe these people, whose lives had been so similar and interconnected, had moved far enough away from that beginning that their foundation was no longer a basis, no longer a fundament. And if this was the case, maybe their situation was similar to that of my partner and me, who come from different cultural backgrounds. A key factor is perhaps that ours is obvious (and therefore easily forgivable) and theirs is not.

This made me wonder about communication overall, whether much political screaming and social media furor is an example of multiple groups, different enough to be defined as their own culture, lambasting the other about what they think is the same thing, but missing the mark. If society is so fractured into its own subgroups, each with its own media and ethos, it’s reasonable to think that our realities and therefore ways of seeing the world have shifted, and that a “common culture” is not as common as it once was. And maybe this is hard to recognize. Perhaps we talk past each other when we have gone in directions different enough to no longer have a common base. We might expect such behaviour from distinctly different groups, but maybe it is harder to see as such when the groups, at least on the surface, are the same.

Perhaps the error is the assumption that all parties understand X and Y in the same way. We have expectations and assumptions of others and we don’t stop to consider that others’ expectations and assumptions might be different. For aspects of culture that we take for granted, it is unfathomable that anyone else might see a situation differently – simply because we only know what we know.

In the past few weeks, my psychology students have been learning about cultural dimensions in class, the universal facets by which national cultures can be characterized or defined. The point I emphasize with my students is that while the values that make up a culture differ wildly, there is not better or worse, desirable or undesirable. We might not consider that cultures have different perspectives on the importance of time or response to uncertainty, but they do. We are enculturated without realizing that to be the case; norms, values, and expectations are taught naturally and indirectly, and it is often only through looking at another culture, bemused by the differences that we notice, that we begin to learn about our own.

Having lived in and alongside multiple cultures, I have tried to let go of my own assumptions and expectations and put myself in different mindset when the occasion requires. If I’m the only one annoyed at a process, chances are it’s my problem and not the process. The process does what it is meant to do, though maybe differently than I have experienced in the past. It is much more comfortable, indeed after a significant amount of discomfort and uncertainty, to simply accept this to be the case rather than to lament other processes that fulfil the same functions. It can be very difficult to avoid value judgments at first, but it is much more pleasant to move within another culture having done so.

As I navigate a life that seems to be setting down roots, and as I find myself spending increasingly more time in what international school parlance calls “local culture”, I recognize more of where I come from, my ideas of norms, assumptions, and expectations shifting along the way. I get scared sometimes, scared of losing myself and what shaped me. There are certain aspects I cling to because it is very hard to navigate while adrift. Even those of us who wander have moments with both feet firmly planted on the ground.

When I think about the conflict my oldest friend described, I see cultural differences. I see people whose understandings of the world around them come from fundamentally different places, and there may be multiple reasons why that’s the case. I see people who do not see that they experience the world differently, but rather assume that their understandings are held in common. It could be that a conversation needs a moderator to tease these things out, to gently prod feelings about X and Y toward a discussion of what I think are much deeper origins.

The humility and vulnerability that it requires to engage in such a conversation cannot be understated, and the very real fear that one might experience under such circumstances is in itself an act of tremendous courage. We have relatively little practice stripping ourselves bare. We are made up of many, many layers and sometimes, to move forward, we need to find out what they are and why they formed. I believe that it is the soul that shines more brightly in the end; looking for the soul of another is what makes such a conversation possible. Getting to know another is an act of bravery because of what it requires of oneself.

And I believe it is never too late to begin again.

The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now. – Henry David Thoreau, Walden