One thing I’ve noticed throughout my travels is that when things go wrong, we need something or someone to blame.
We need some excuse as to why we’re not having the trip we envisioned in our dreams.
So what do many of us do? We blame that country.
“Ah man I HATE India! I got such bad food poisoning while I was there.”
Instead of saying…
“India is a beautiful country but I got sick and I hated it.”
There’s a big difference in the way that we phrase that. You shouldn’t hate the country, hate the situation that went wrong.
Don’t say you were robbed because you were in a violent country. Say that you were in X country and you got robbed…it happens.
Too often we give into the stereotypes that we read about.
If we think we’re going to a violent place, and then we see some sketchy people it will reinforce our fears.
OR something negative happens to us and we blame the stereotype. If you get sick it’s because the country is “dirty”. If you get robbed it’s because the country “isn’t safe”.
It’s unfair to blame the country instead of the problem.
You can hate the driver who ripped you off, or the food that made you sick, or the asshole who robbed you, but that in no way is indicative of a country as a whole.
So the next time you say “I hate ____ country”, ask yourself, “do you really hate the country, or did you just have a bad experience?”
