Mosaics



Photo by Tom Magliery

 Mosaics are an interesting concept: they are composed of small pieces, which individually have their own allure, but placed strategically together, they make up beautiful shapes. I can’t help thinking that mosaics are a symbol of life: compositions of moments, people and places, each piece special and essential in the aesthetics of the final masterpiece.
Lately, I have been talking to a lot of my Latin friends about their experiences dating Americans. It seems they all have the same –or at least very similar—issues regarding cultural differences. I thought this would be a good topic to write about because it is a clear reflection of how the small pieces that make us who we are, play a big role in how we interact with the people that surround us. With regard to how this relates to Life at Trinity, I thought it would be interesting to write about how people of similar interests, that live in the same environment, may have so much in common and yet have great difficulty understanding each other.


Foto by Maria José Treviño

 Before coming to Trinity I had never given interculturality so much thought. To me it was all about “respect”. In order to be respected, you must show others respect for their beliefs and culture, but as I have come to learn it is far from being that simple. While interactions may essentially be rooted on respect, they also have a lot to do with understanding and knowing what motivates people to act one way or another. In other words, how each small piece of a person’s life-mosaic influences the final shape and makes that mosaic different from one’s own.
Culturally, the approaches to dating and even friendship differ between Latin-Americans and US Americans. To us, guys should always pursue girls, this is what we are told by our parents and what we grow up experiencing. Here however, girls are a lot more forward in approaching guys and are equal participants in the process of pursuit. So how do we forget about these tabbus in order to understand and simply enjoy each other’s company? Well we can’t. But while forgetting or ignoring is not an option, we can learn to the mindful of the differences.
A year ago I probably would not have thought of these differences as anything other than incongruencies between other’s and myself, and I would have probably disregarded the relationship altogether. However, now that I understand that the terms intercultural and multicultural are more than just words and have a deep and important meaning, I find myself acknowledging how important our day to day experiences have been to making up how we face the world.
It is ultimately a unique opportunity we have to come and encounter people of such a varied array of backgrounds. As students we are able to find common ground with people who we otherwise may not have even had the opportunity to meet. Living in close proximity with each other, it becomes impossible not to appreciate how unique and interesting each other’s life experiences are.


Mosaic by Maria T is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.