When in a hole, stop digging

This weekend was an international weekend for me with players from all over Europe and North America, and inevitably (as always happens with an international crowd) the subject turns to stereotypes and negative differences between the groups. You know the standard conversation, “Us Americans are not perfect but at least we are better than blank, they all seem to have a problem with being polite.” Or “We blanks are not perfect but at least we do not have to medicate ourselves because we are not happy.” And this is the polite stuff.

I am not suggesting that my international crowd is prejudice either, I am prejudice, but I think I equally dislike most people regardless of where they are from. What I am suggesting is that it is much easier to recognize faults in other people than it is to recognize short comings in ourselves. I basically believe we are all intrinsically the same; we never want to be out and about in our daily lives and feel that extreme emptiness of being that sits in the pit of our stomachs. It happens to the best of us from time to time, and most of us hope it is just a normal part of being alive, but some little voice in our heads screams “This is not normal!” For a variety of reasons, either I am feeling the black hole of despair too often or for too long and even in some cases not enough. When ever we think we are not normal we look around and assess how everyone else is coping, and we think/say “Ah Ha, I may be fucked up but I am not as fucked up as they are.” When really we are all just trying to cope with extreme emptiness of being that sits in the pit of our stomachs, as best as we can.

For most people it is filling the pit with someone else. How we all attract that someone else is a little different and where the true differences between cultures was this weekend. However we are all looking for the same thing it is the just the approach that is different.