What the French Think

Last night I went to go chat with my French mom about how it’s nice to see things differently now that I’ve been here. I gave a few examples of little small things that are cool and different, my “petite madeleines,” and how only having been here a month has changed my paradigm. Well, that’s what I had intended to say but I don’t know the word for paradigm in French, but as I tried to get across what I was thinking about, her response struck me as being actually very profound, especially coming to someone like me from someone like her.

She said, (and this is per my memory and translation and paraphrasing), “It’s important to know when the world is different. People don’t like each other so often because they don’t understand what the other is thinking. And when people have had problems and are later in their life like me, you realize what is important and it’s the same things that are important everywhere. We say, ‘Well so-and-so is what the Americans think,’ and they say that about us, but what’s important is that we’re both right! Things that are so different are really the same, and it’s important to understand people.”