As many know, I am originally from the Netherlands. The Dutch are widely known as a kind of “in your face” people. The typical Dutchie will not shy away from sharing his or her view about you to the point where I have been in many a situation where I sat with my toes curled as yet another Dutch person went outside the bounds of what is considered to be acceptable behavior in international contexts. The Swedes on the other hand will go out of their way by a mile (and then some) to avoid having to confront you even when they feel your behavior is unacceptable. Instead, you’ll be ignored and given the cold shoulder without you ever knowing what in heaven's name you did wrong. Different behaviours, but the same starting point: we judge the people around us. All the time and using ourselves as the definition of normal. Hence the saying, when in Rome, be like the romans. The problem is that we don’t know what battles the other person is fighting. We have all been in situations where something that didn’t make sense at all was suddenly clarified by us learning about something that we didn’t know about before. So, my ask of myself and you, dear reader, is to simply be kind. Or rather, to be a little kinder than what you would otherwise have been.