MEXICAN CULTURE CHAPTER THREE

MEXICAN CULTURE:

In the series of columns I've written, to the tune of around 300, and four books during a period of four years, I've attempted to present my observations of what I've experienced living in central Mexico in the city of Guanajuato. To say that it has been interesting is to make a gross understatement. What I've attempted to do, albeit poorly, is present information. And really, all we ever receive in our daily lives is information. Whether it is information in the form of written material or an actual event, like a car accident or a loved one's death, it is just information. How we react to any information, no matter what form it takes, depends on how we perceive it.

If you have a hard time with this concept, you are not alone. I spent the better part of my 48 years on this earth more or less believing as most humans do: that what happens to me as an individual can be someone else's fault. What is really meant by that is if someone ran over your foot with his truck, and you punch him in the nose for his effort, then you blame punching him in the face on the fact he ran over your foot.

But, let me suggest that the running over your foot by your careless friend is just information. It is an event presented to you in the form of information. How you choose to deal with that information is entirely up to you-it is your fault how you react to anything! Punching someone in the face for hurting your foot is but one choice. Yes, your foot is injured, you are in dire pain, but how you choose to react to that informational event is up to you. You get to choose. You don't have to hit your friend. You could choose differently.

Perception is everything! How you perceive anything is determined by your personal filters through which the information flows. If you perceived your friend's carelessly running over your foot with his truck as an act of malice, then you could hit him, hobble away on one foot cussing wildly, break off the friendship, sue him, or any number of choices. But the key thing to realize is that what happened was just information in the form of pain, and that event cannot make you do anything. It is you who make you do something. The event was just a lifeless informational event that requires you to choose how you react to it. It can hold no power over you to manipulate you. You are responsible.

Information in the form of the written word is also a powerless entity. It cannot do anything to you. It cannot make you act. It cannot hurt you. All it is is a bunch of words on a computer screen, a book, a newspaper, or whatever. If someone writes something offensive and you read it, all you are reading is information. You have no idea the motive of the writer, what's in his or her mind, why it was written. It is information. It is nothing but words. How you choose to act to what you read is entirely up to you and your perception.

I often hear people calling this writer or that writer someone who is writing nothing but negative things. No. It is not something negative that was written; it is just something that was written. It is just words on paper. If you call it negative, it is, well, your perception of the things that the writer wrote.

People give absolutely too much power to inanimate things on a page of text over their lives! People will get their knickers all twisted in a knot over something written when what they are doing is giving power over their lives to words.

I do not for one moment give credence to the axiom that " The Pen is mightier than the sword." Sorry, it's a nice axiom but that dog doesn't bark up this tree. The pen, and what someone does with it, has no more power or control over my life than what I afford it. I get to choose how I will act or react to something I read. What someone writes has no power over me. I have power over me. I choose my emotions, not someone else.

So, what does this have anything to do with Learning Mexican Culture? Plenty! Incomprehensibly throughout the past few years, what I've written about my experience in Mexico has garnered some of the most vitriolic responses, not from Mexicans (who, by the way, do read my work) but from my fellow American expatriates here in central Mexico.

From how they have responded to me, and some have actually responded to my face, you would think that I have total control over their lives to be able to manipulate them into saying and wanting to do things to me that you would read in a horror novel. I've actually been threatened with physical harm...over words!

Frankly, I am not that powerful. I am not a superman who can control others diabolically so as to make them want to hurt me or to have a bad day. I am sorry, but I am not that strong. People are affording me, crediting me, with entirely too much power. I cannot make anyone feel a certain way just from what I write.

Let me go on record as saying, "I cannot make anyone do anything, feel anything, perform a certain way. I don't have that much power over anyone."

But, you would think that I do from the perceptions of some of the expat community in central Mexico who read my stuff.

And, why do they read it if they hate it so much is anyone's guess. But, they do. I am constantly barraged with nasty and biting comments in my online writing venues. They hate what I write but keep reading it. Bizarre.

If perception is everything, and I firmly ascribe to that theory, then I do not, indeed I cannot, claim responsibility for how what I've written has been perceived by my emotionally wobbly fellow expats in central Mexico.

If what I've written has been perceived as "negative," then it is not what I've written that was negative but the perceptions of those who make those proclamations of negativity. I've never written anything negative or positive. All I've ever done is record in online publications and in my books my observations of the culture in Mexico as I've experienced it.

If someone perceived what I've written as something positive then it was through his or her mental and emotional filters where that perception was wrought. If they claim what I wrote was something negative, then that is not my fault. I do not possess power over anyone to make him or her perceive something as negative.

People should take responsibility for how they perceive things, if you ask me!

What I intend is a series of articles on some of my continual analysis, intuition, and insight about the culture of this fine country. I hope to make the point saliently clear that to offer up a critical review of someone else's culture is not something bad. All it will be is information! What I will do is offer my observations and the fruition from what my continual pursuit for answers, in this sometimes very confusing culture, has brought me.