A ship arrives loaded - with helpful people and cheerful shouts!
A week ago I came back home to California after spending a month of my summer in Sweden with family and friends. I don't know if it's like Sweden is going through a big change and/or if it's just me that has changed. This article was written in 2015.
On a number of independent occasions, I question very much why people behave so unkindly towards people they don't know. I can give a few examples to help you understand a bit more what I mean:
1. We are at the train station in Malmö. A little further away is a man with a bicycle. Right next to him is a whole group of people, probably two families. The man with the bicycle drops his sunglasses. One of the women turns around, looks down and says loudly - "No, they weren't ours", then turns back and continues talking. What an attitude!
2. I am on the beach with my 1.5 year old daughter. She is happily playing in the sand. After a while, another mother and grandmother come down to the beach, stand in the low water and chat. They have with them a boy of about 3 years old. The guy goes to the sand pit, stands in it and screams and hisses at my little girl, who of course gets really scared and starts crying. What do the mother and grandmother do in this situation? Nothing!
3. A father is at the beach with his sons, probably aged 10. I am there with my two oldest children, 6 and 10 years old. The boys are jumping, diving, swimming and playing and having fun, but in every sentence they use at least one swear word. Their language is unbearable to listen to! What is the father doing? He lazily asks them to stop once during the hour we were there swimming, but did the boys listen to that? And the fact that he said anything at all was probably just because my kids asked me why they used so many ugly words all the time.
4. I drive to the coast to let my youngest daughter sleep in the car for a while. When she's asleep, I decide to go and check out a newly opened place in the harbour. I park the car next to a picnic table, open the car doors and sit down to enjoy the sea breeze. A man comes walking towards me with subdued steps while loudly having a conversation with someone further away. I close the doors so that my daughter is not awakened by his loud voice. He is standing by my car at the moment. I say as I close the doors that I have a sleeping little girl in the car. He says, "Oh, that's why you parked here. You're standing on a lawn. You can't stand here. Move the car." He is extremely rude in his language. I feel a knot in my stomach and I just want to tell him calmly that he should be nicer to his guests if he is going to get any. But dumbfounded by the way he has treated me, I just say, "I can drive away," and I leave.
Now that I'm back home in California, I reflect on these encounters with people I'd never met before and probably never will again. Why do they have this attitude? Do they even know how they interact with the people around them? And they can't blame it on the lack of sunlight, because summer offered many glorious hours of sun and warmth. The weather might otherwise seem to be a reasonable explanation for the difference between the way people behave here in sunny California compared to cold Sweden.
In California, I am greeted by cheerful greetings, friendly cashiers, helpful people, smiles and positive comments about everything. This is what I found so superficial and almost silly when I first came here. But now, almost 5 years later, I realize how much I love being greeted by positive and helpful people, even if they may seem superficial. The whole me is happy and there is an atmosphere here that is completely different from the one back home in Sweden.
Are we perhaps afraid of not being normal at home, of going outside what we think is normal? Are we even aware of how we treat people we don't know? What would happen if the attitude from here was shipped home to cold Sweden?
Could it make a difference in how we treat each other? Emigrant, immigrant, old, young, poor, rich, gay or straight? Sometimes it doesn't feel like that and it makes me so deeply sad and angry.