Le me give you an example:
A dear friend was helping out by picking up a few items from the grocery store while out doing her own shop. The willingness to help and the actual helping was much appreciated.
One of the items on the short list was 12 oz hot cups. Well, the store was out of 12 oz hot cups. They had 8 oz and 16 oz hot cups — but not 12 oz. Making a decision on which to substitute, she purchased the 8 oz cups.
To me the obvious solution would have been the 16 oz cups. One could fill the 16 oz cup with 12 oz of fluid (or more) and thus fulfill whatever function the 12 oz cups were intended for.
I’m sure my friend had equally compelling reasoning for choosing the 8 oz cups. This blog is not intended as a discussion of appropriate cup substitutions.
The point is: in that moment when the cups arrived the nature of the substitution served as a shining example that others don’t think the same as I do. This shocking thing is not that fact that others don’t think the same way we do. The shocking thing is that this comes as a surprise.
As we go through the day operating under the tacit assumption that the inner world of others is governed by the same laws and conditions as our own inner world, we have ample opportunity for misunderstanding and confusion.
If you could manage to suppress your rampant xenophobia, you would do for better to assume that you have no clue who or what the people you see are — a stranger in a strange land. You’d be far closer to the truth.