In my last post on “MERGING” I began sharing some insights I’ve made about my cross-cultural journey in Manila that mirror life on the roads here. But MERGING is only the beginning. The next challenge on the roads and in life here in Manila is….
EVADING.
EVADING – Skillfully avoiding or steering clear of oncoming obstacles or hazards.
So what does EVADING have to do with driving and life in Manila as a Western foreigner?
It truly feels like we are always MERGING, but the reality is that when we are in those few moments where we are not MERGING, we are EVADING.
And on the road, the big obstacles or hazards are the easy ones to identify and EVADE.
Locations with bad reputations of traffic – we don’t go there.
Peak traffic times – we try not to drive.
Large trucks or busses that slow things down – we go around them.
The obvious obstacles to getting where we want to go look daunting, but for the most part you can prepare for them. You can EVADE through planning. These bigger challenges can wear you down, but usually they don’t present a safety threat.
It’s much harder to EVADE the little things.
It’s the little things that make the roads so dangerous. It’s the motorcycles weaving through traffic. It’s the tricycles. It’s the small kids trying to play frogger during the flow of traffic. It’s the venders selling newspapers, fishing poles, or coat racks. These are the things that you often can’t prepare for – you must react quickly to EVADE for the sake of your safety and others.
It’s the same with adjusting cross-culturally in life.
I find that in terms of cultural transition – it’s not the “big things” that generate the most stress. The big things wear us down over time, but they don’t break us. The big and obvious things are navigating things like traffic, food, and language barriers at times. These things can be challenging, but they are to be expected so it’s easier to adjust, accept, or EVADE depending on the situation.
But the small things….it’s the small things that present a danger. They are the flying projectiles at high speeds that hit you when you aren’t prepared. These are the sources of culture and transition stress that demands quick adjustment and responsiveness. We can try our best to EVADE the pain and frustration from these obstacles and hazards, but they come to fast and unexpectedly that efforts in EVADING lead to COLLIDING.
The small things for us are like those cultural norms or differences that we can take for granted. It’s small misunderstandings that you don’t learn about until two weeks later. It’s not being able to find an ATM that works to get money. It’s leaving a conversation and not knowing the meaning of what people may or may not have been communicating. It’s having devices explode when you plug them into the wall despite buying all the right adapters. It’s offending someone without knowing why. It’s planning on meeting someone at an agreed upon time only to have the other not show up.
EVADING can seem like a passive or negative cross-cultural posture. It’s not something that should define our efforts, but there’s some natural human realities involved. When you are a foreigner (especially western), unless you are a complete jerk, you are super sensitive to being a burden to others. Part of EVADING is what comes with a sense of what it means to be a good guest.
We find ourselves trying EVADE obstacles that will cause pain or generate extra difficulty to us. But we also find ourselves EVADING to keep from causing pain or extra difficulty to others. It can be an exhausting way to live until one starts to get a little more comfortable and skillful in understanding where those obstacles or things that feel like flying projectiles are coming from.
So learning to EVADE is part of the journey once we have the courage to MERGE. And it’s the small, unexpected things that present the biggest cross-cultural dangers because they come at you when you are least expecting them.
We can’t EVADE everything, but constant learning seems key to expanding our vision and understanding and anticipation. Without that learning we can end up with a lot more collisions than we want.
What helps you appropriately EVADE in cross-cultural situations?
